


Unhappily Married

by Books_Tea_Fandoms



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015), Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Fluff, I didn't plan it, I'm Sorry, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, Marriage, it gets angsty, kylux fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-20
Updated: 2017-03-17
Packaged: 2018-07-25 18:01:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 23
Words: 30,848
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7542517
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Books_Tea_Fandoms/pseuds/Books_Tea_Fandoms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Set after the events of Star Wars: The Force Awakens) || Kylo Ren and General Hux have both been caught and accused of war crimes, and are facing the punishment of death if they don't think fast. Fortunately, after hours of deliberation, an idea is found, although it isn't exactly what they were hoping for...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> Hey! OK, this is my first fanfiction that I've put on this site, so I'd really appreciate your feedback! :)

General Hux was pacing back and forth, small against the vast expanse of space, where the planets that they had jointly destroyed used to be. They were in a holding ship, designed for criminals that were either too dangerous or too infamous to be kept in a cell in the regular galactic prison. They weren't allowed out of this ship until their trial was over, and the ship wasn't really even a ship- there were no thrusters or any kind of technology that would actually allow them to move from this spot. This temporary prison they were being kept in was spacious, which was good considering the fact that Hux and Kylo rarely got along, and when they did it was in cold indifference. The only other living being on the ship was a Galactic Official, whom they had come to know well, but who usually kept to herself because she didn't want to be stuck on board with two war criminals for the entire duration of their trial (which could be a matter of years).  
Kylo Ren was sitting in Hux's chair, in the living space that they shared, watching Hux walk angrily back and forth with a pensive expression. Hux had been like this for a couple of hours now, and Kylo hadn't bothered to ask him to stop, because he knew that doing this was best for Hux's thinking, and they really needed an idea. The light of distant stars silhouetted Hux, whose pacing got more and more agitated.  
"It's no use." He stopped pacing, and wheeled around to face Kylo, who sighed. "There's no way out of this, and we're going to be put to death. The Resistance would love that, wouldn't they?" He spat. Kylo dwelled on this statement for a while, knowing that his mother was at the forefront of the Resistance. She wouldn't care if her estranged son was put to death: he had killed her husband, who had finally, after so many years, made amends with her, and they were ready to start again. He'd crushed the opportunity for a wife to reunite with her husband after over a decade.  
Something clicked in Kylo's brain.  
Husband.  
Hux had started pacing again, and Kylo looked over to him.  
"I have an idea." He muttered.  
"You have an idea?" Hux turned to face him again, his bitter expression somewhat laced with surprise. This vanished quickly as Hux became annoyed at himself that he was not the one to realise it, whatever it was. "What is it?"  
"You're not going to like it, but it may be the only option we have." Hux narrowed his eyes at this.  
"What?"  
"We get married."  
"What?" Hux nearly choked on his own words.  
"We get married." Kylo repeated.  
"That clarifies nothing, Ren. In what way is this productive?"  
"Galactic law states that two people who are married to each other cannot testify against their marriage partner."  
"There will be other people who can testify against us."  
"Like who? Very few escaped the explosion of the Starkiller Base."  
"Your senior staff."  
"They are all fiercely loyal to you, General, and besides, most of them have escaped into or beyond the outer reaches of charted space. If they were to return, they would also be facing charges, and none of them would risk that. It's better to keep the remaining members of the First Order out of contact but alive. By eradicating the opportunity for us to testify against each other, there's nobody left with enough evidence to fully testify against each other. That would mean that there's a chance that we could survive this,"  
"With life in prison."  
"We'd still be alive, Hux." Hux went back to pacing, weighing up the pros and cons of the offer up silently in his head. Kylo sat back in the chair, waiting patiently for Hux to give in. He refused to use any of his mind tricks on him, because Hux would know: he'd been on Kylo's staff for so long that he knew how it felt to have one's mind probed.  
Ten minutes of silence passed, with the only noise cutting it being Hux's footsteps.  
"Fine." Hux muttered bitterly.  
"Huh?"  
"I said fine." Kylo sighed. There was no feeling between them (not including their background contempt for one another), but what had to be done had to be done, for the sake of their lives.  
"Do you want some time to mentally prepare yourself, General?"  
"There's a problem."  
"What?"  
"We have to get a Galactic Official to officiate it, and there's no way that she would. She knows what we're up to." The 'she' in question was the Galactic Official who lived downstairs. Kylo was aware that Hux utterly abhorred this plan, but his picking apart of it was actually beneficial, and it made it watertight.  
"You forget, General, that I have the power to control that." Hux paused for a moment.  
"And you're sure this will work. If it doesn't, there's a chance that the punishment will be more severe."  
"It will work. Anyway, the punishment we're facing is death, so even if it does fail, the punishment can't exactly get more severe." Kylo was acutely aware that the general was extremely uncomfortable, and felt this union to be an attack on his pride, but there was no other option for survival. "Go get her, then." Kylo didn't want to be the one to explain their situation to anyone, and knew that Hux was too proud to admit this made him uncomfortable.  
"Fine. Meet me here in an hour." Hux stormed out, not giving Kylo a second look. Kylo had nowhere to go, so he remained where he was, mentally preparing himself (and feeling a little ill). It was either this or death, and he wasn't entirely sure which idea he hated more.  
The door swished open exactly one hour later. Hux entered first, followed by the Galactic Official.  
"Have I really left you two alone up here long enough for you to now want to get married?" She asked, laughing a little.  
"Yes." Hux responded, looking at Kylo. The Official couldn't see his face, but it was one of disgust and alarm.  
"Well then, if it's going to be that way, I'm going to have you to get you to fill these in." She handed them both tablets with forms to fill in on. They did so dutifully and silently.  
"Is that it?" Kylo asked.  
"No. I need to get audio recordings of you two consenting."  
"Fine." She took out an audio recorder, and set it to record.  
"Do you, Benjamin Solo, consent freely to marry Armitage Hux?"  
"I do." Kylo replied. It may have looked to the inexperienced eye like Kylo was repressing joy at consenting, but no: he was trying desperately not to laugh at the fact that one of the most feared characters in the First Order was, in fact, called Armitage.  
"And do you, Armitage Hux, consent freely to marry Benjamin Solo?"  
"I do." Hux replied, also trying not to laugh at the fact that the Master of the Knights of Ren, the man who killed his own father and was known to be a ruthless killer, was called Benjamin.  
"That's the formalities done, but there's one more thing." Both looked around to the Galactic Official. "For the duration of your trial, you will be monitored and inspected monthly to ensure that you have not married to prevent the possibility of testifying against each other. These inspections will occur on the last day of every month, on the Galactic Standard Calendar, at any point during the day, and you will only be alerted of when the inspector will arrive when they actually do. Is this clear?"  
"Yes." Kylo replied.  
"Wonderful. I'll have these sent off, and you should be legally married within the hour. I'll leave you two to do whatever you want." She left quickly, obviously unsettled by the situation but trying desperately not to show it.  
"Monthly inspections?" Hux spat. "You mean we have to pretend to get along?"  
"I'll try not to take your horror personally." Kylo shot back. "It'll only be for an hour or two, right?"  
"I presume so. But we don't know when on the day it will happen. If the inspector arrives to us having a full-blown fight, then it's bad news for us." Hux looked thoughtful. "So we'd better pretend well. I mean, how hard can it be?"


	2. Before Inspection One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so so much for the wonderful positivity you showed after chapter 1! You're all fantastic :)

Two weeks after the event, there was no indication whatsoever that anyone had found out about the union, except for the inspectors. Their first inspection was in three days, and the Galactic Official from downstairs had given them a heads-up that they were to be assessed in multiple areas, one of which being how well they knew each other, and that would be heavily detail-oriented. As a result, they planned to meet in their shared living space in order to get the answers from one another, using a set of questions that they had been given that were likely to come up.  
When Hux entered, he was somewhat surprised to find Kylo not wearing the robes that he normally wore: instead, he wore a black t shirt and black jeans. Hux, however, was still wearing his uniform. He sneered at Kylo, who glared back.  
"Do you always wear that?" Kylo was judging Hux for this.  
"Yes. It's my uniform. I am a First Order-"  
"Hux, there's no First Order left. Not properly, anyway."  
"Then what are we? To whose side do we belong?"  
"We don't belong to any side. We're now just two people with ridiculous first names who have to get the answers to questions we don't care about in order to pretend that we do care." Kylo ran his fingers through his messy black hair in order to get it out of his face, and sat down on the floor, back against the wall. Hux elected to sit down in his chair, back dead straight. "Come on, Armitage, let's begin. I don't want this to take any longer than it must."  
"Don't call me that." Hux snapped back. "What do you need to know?"  
"How do you like your coffee?" Hux immediately picked up on how little Kylo cared, and how judgmental he was being, even though he hadn't received an answer.  
"I only drink water."  
"Fine." Kylo wrote the answer down. "I like mine black, but sweet." He wrote this down in a different place, so that he could give his answers to Hux later. "What time do you go to sleep and wake up normally?"  
"I go to sleep at eleven. I wake up at seven. There is usually no variation in this." Kylo gave him a judgmental look, and wrote the answer down.  
"I go to sleep very late, depending, and then sleep in."  
"Until when?" Kylo shrugged in response.  
"I don't know."  
"How do you not know? Do you not have a routine?"  
"Not really." Hux looked disgusted. "Not all of us have Type A personalities, General."  
"How do you get anything done as a Type B person? Where's your routine?"  
"I get things done in my own time." Hux huffed. Kylo read the next question silently.  
"What's the next question?" No reply. "Ren, what's the next question."  
"What was your childhood like?" He snapped quietly. Hux looked at his feet.  
"Oh." Hux's expression was only betraying a shade of the struggle he was going through to try and suppress the traumas of his childhood. "You go first, please."  
"I'd rather not."  
"Please." This came out as an order, although faint hints of desperation came with it.  
"Fine." Kylo explained to Hux all of the things he had gone through as a child: his parents' expectations of him, their misunderstanding of him, them not understanding the pull to the Dark Side because neither of them understood the ways of the force and how it could drag you down, their divorce over his change to the Dark Side, and the pain, all the pain he felt knowing that he'd torn his family into pieces, even though the Dark Side just felt _right_. He finished, feeling miserable himself, and looked over to Hux. "It's your turn." Hux had seemed to lose the ability to speak, and his mouth was moving in an attempt to do so, but no sounds were coming out. Kylo knew he had to get answers somehow, and went into Hux's mind to see what he was thinking and remembering about his childhood.  
Kylo didn't just understand Hux, he could _feel_ it. All of it. The physical, emotional, and verbal abuse, all the punishment he went through for being 'weak' and 'useless', the constant impression that was forced on him that he would never amount to anything because his father had an illegitimate child.  
His father.  
The central figure in Hux's childhood, someone who never gave him any space to breathe, constantly beating him or psychologically tormenting him because he wasn't perfect.  
Perfect.  
He was brought up told that he would never be perfect, but that was the expectation placed on him anyway. All the scars, the bruises, everything, made him less perfect and made it harder to attain the goal where his father would accept him.  
Kylo felt all of the suffering Hux had experienced, and how this had all affected him far into adulthood.  
"Get out." Hux managed to stutter. "Get out of my brain, Ren!" Kylo did so, and saw that Hux's face was ravaged with pain, and that there were tears streaking down his face.  
"I'm so sorry." He genuinely meant this. Hux looked over to him, wiping the tears from his face and hardening his expression again, the only sign of him every suffering being his reddened eyes. "It's alright now. That chapter of your life is over." Kylo was lying through his teeth: he knew that childhood events never really left a person, but he had no idea how else to comfort Hux. He was also acutely aware that he sounded like his mother.  
"Leave it, Ren. What's the next question?"  
"Are you sure you're alright?"  
"You don't care, stop pretending to. What's the next question?"  
"What's your favourite colour?"  
"I'm not six, Ren. I don't have a favourite colour."  
"But if you had to choose?"  
"No."  
"No isn't a-"  
"No."  
"Fine. You don't have a favourite colour." And so the conversation and questioning went on like this: simple questions with simple answers. Nothing painful like before.  
"It's too warm in here." Hux interrupted Kylo mid-question, about ten minutes later. Kylo tried not to smirk: he'd been using the Force to turn the thermostat on the other side of the room up bit by bit, trying to get Hux to remove the outer layer of his uniform, not for any particularly malicious purpose, but just to annoy Hux and make him feel uncomfortable doing something he didn't want to do.  
"I didn't notice."  
"Where's the thermostat?" Kylo didn't respond, instead turning it higher.  
"This is deliberate, isn't it? You want me to take this off. I refuse. Nice try, Ren." Hux was red, completely overheated in his jacket.  
"Are you sure, Armitage?" Kylo turned it higher.  
"Don't call me that." Higher again.  
"Are you sure?" Higher.  
"Yes." Higher.  
"Sure?" Higher. Hux didn't respond immediately this time.  
"Well, considering we have to get to know each other, I guess you'd find out soon enough."  
"Find out what?" Hux remove his jacket, revealing a grey, short-sleeved undershirt, but this wasn't what caught Kylo's attention.  
"You wear shoulder pads?" There was a hint of mockery in his voice.  
"Yes." Hux grumbled.  
"Why?" Hux removed the shoulder pads, and Kylo understood why. His frame without the shoulder pads was small, unintimidating, and somewhat vulnerable.  
"That's why." He replied, knowing what Kylo was thinking. Kylo turned the thermostat back to where it was before he'd meddled with it. Hux reached for his shoulder pads and jacket again.  
"Don't."  
"Why not?"  
"You look better without them."  
"That's absurd, Ren."  
"I'll turn the thermostat up if you do."  
"Fine." He spat, dropping both, and sitting back where he was.  
"Anyway, you were always small and weak and not scary to me, so-"  
" _I am not weak!_ " He yelled. Kylo forgot that that genuinely hit a sore spot, and immediately felt bad.  
"Sorry, I didn't-"  
"Save it, Ren. We'll finish the questions tomorrow." Hux picked up his jacket and shoulder pads, and stormed away to his room. Kylo picked up his and Hux's answers, and went to his room. He picked up his own answers that he'd written down for Hux, and walked over to Hux's room. He knocked on the door.  
"Hux?" There was no reply. "Open the door or I will break it down." There was still no reply. "Hux?" The door opened. Hux had his jacket on again, and he did look intimidating.  
"What? You haven't come to apologise, have you?"  
"I have the answers you need to memorise. Memorise them and then we can finish tomorrow."  
"Oh." Hux took the paper from Kylo's hand, not looking at him. "Your handwriting is terrible." Hux shut the door and walked away, leaving Kylo to stare at the door for a moment before he himself walked back to his own quarters.


	3. Inspection One

The night before the inspection, Hux was pacing again. Kylo was sitting in Hux's chair watching him again. The pacing was obviously caused by something to do with the inspection, but Kylo did not know what, and wasn't bothered enough to expend any of his energy using a mind trick to extract the reason. Hux was obviously getting flustered, so Kylo couldn't help but to ask.  
"What's the matter?"  
"The inspector could come at any time of the day."  
"What's the matter with that?"  
"Well, it means that they could come first thing in the morning when we're both asleep."  
"And-?"  
"It means that we have to share a bed or they'll know it's all fake." Kylo felt a little sick- he hadn't thought about that.  
When the time came, Hux went to bed first.  
"Use my room." Kylo said.  
"No. Yours is messy and it smells."  
"How would you know?"  
"I'm making an assumption based on your personality. You know I'm right, though."  
"Maybe you are. But, Mr Pristine, it looks lived in. The inspector could look at your room now and assume nobody lives in it. Use my room."  
" _Fine_ " He huffed, walking over to his room and moving his things into Kylo's, grumbling continuously under his breath. Kylo laughed. At eleven o'clock, Kylo saw the light in his room go out, and then rolled his eyes. He wasn't tired at this point, so he sat by the floor-to-ceiling window, looking out at the vast empty expanse of space. The view was unending, and he suddenly felt so small and insignificant, which made him feel sad because of his being used to feeling like the most powerful man in existence. Obviously, that wasn't true. He'd been overthrown by a band of misfits.  
This feeling was obviously too much for Kylo's delicate temperament, and he wanted to destroy something. Unfortunately, his lightsaber had been taken by the Galactic Official, and was in a very strong safe. Instead of looking out the window or destroying something, he decided it would probably be a good time to go to bed.  
Hux had very thoughtfully (for his own sake, obviously) left Kylo's pyjamas in a pile on the floor outside the door, which was an indication that he should probably get changed in the bathroom. After all, Kylo wouldn't want to wake his majesty from his slumber. He changed, leaving his clothes on the floor in the bathroom, and went into his room. He thought he was moving quietly enough to not disturb Hux, but apparently not.  
"Do you have to be so oafish all the time? It's one in the morning. Please be quieter." Hux's voice was heavy with sleep.  
"I'll try harder next time. Maybe you should stop being such a light sleeper." Kylo climbed into bed, lying as close to the edge as possible without falling off, so as to avoid any contact.  
Obviously, there was a lot of arguing over who had too much of the covers.  
Eventually, they did fall asleep. Two hours later.  
Hux still got up at seven o'clock. When he woke up, he was lying ramrod straight, like he always slept, but with Kylo's heavy hand resting on his sternum. Hux sneered with disgust, and pushed his hand away. Kylo slept on, leaving Hux to wonder what would wake him up.  
He got up quickly, grabbing his clothes, and wandered over to the bathroom. _Of course Kylo had left his clothes all over the floor. What a disgusting person._ Hux kicked them out of the way, and went about his daily routine: shower, wash face, shave, get dressed (shoulder pads being obviously important), and do hair. Hux couldn't bear the idea of anyone seeing him without his hair styled and set perfectly: he looked positively ridiculous. For this reason alone he was glad that Kylo was a pretty heavy sleeper.  
Kylo woke up three hours later, which wasn't too bad by his standards. His hair was messy and he obviously wasn't fully sensible. This didn't worry Hux one bit; he didn't care anyway, so why should it worry him?  
By lunchtime, Hux was pacing again.  
"What now?" Kylo asked.  
"Nothing." He snapped back.  
"It's the waiting, isn't it?"  
"None of your business."  
"I'll take that as a yes. Stop pacing, Hux. It's annoying me."  
"It isn't like you're not annoying me."  
"How am I-"  
"By existing."  
"OK then."  
Hux didn't eat anything for lunch, Kylo noticed. They hadn't spent so much time together in the whole time they'd been on this prison ship, and it was really grating for the both of them. Kylo kept noticing stupid things about Hux that were so contradictory to his own character that they just inherently annoyed him, and Hux just didn't want to be around an oversensitive manchild the whole time.  
By the time it was mid-afternoon, Hux was stressing beyond the capacity which Kylo could tolerate.  
"Do something productive. Stop pacing. _Please_."  
"How about you do something?" He snapped back. "Like leave."  
"If this is how it's going to be for the whole time we get inspected, every time, I think I might throw myself overboard."  
"This isn't a boat, Ren, you can't just-"  
"Watch me. I'll throw myself out over the edge, and then my head will explode and I won't have to listen to you all the time."  
"That sounds unproductive."  
"Stressing isn't particularly productive either."  
"Is there nothing better for you to do? Because I'm starting to approve of your idea of throwing yourself out."  
"Please stop." Kylo warned, raising a hand which could force-choke him at any point. Hux rolled his eyes.  
As it turned out, Hux did have a stress-coping mechanism, and that was baking. It distracted him from his problems, and it calmed him down because it was ordered and he knew exactly what he was doing. He was going to make four dozen cookies, which-  
"Ren!" Kylo had taken a cookie from the cooling rack.  
"What?"  
"They're not done. you can't just take one when there are more batches left." Kylo knew that what he was doing was going to wind up Hux. He ate the cookie.  
"These are really good."  
"They're also not done, so if you don't mind. I'm doing this to de-stress, but if you mess it up it won't- Ren!" He was beginning to sound a little whiny, because Kylo had eaten another one. Hux took the last batch out of the oven.  
"Baking out of stress, though. How unusual of you, General."  
"How well do you really know me, Ren. How can you say it's out of character if you didn't know my character in the first place?" He snapped back. He slid the last batch onto a cooling rack.  
"Are they done now?"  
"No!" Hux was having a really strong stress reaction to Kylo eating the cookies, which was actually beginning to worry Kylo a little. Obviously, this didn't worry Kylo enough to actually do something about it, so obviously, he took another cookie. This was Hux's breaking point: obviously it wasn't the cookie-snatching that was directly stressing him out, but it had sent him over the edge. Hux turned on Kylo, red-faced, and pushed him out of the way.  
"Calm down!"  
"You don't say that to someone who's stressed out!" Hux replied. Kylo grabbed Hux by the shoulders, but Hux struggled against him. This meant that Kylo had to immobilise him by using the full strength of his arms wrapped around Hux, who wouldn't stop struggling.  
"Listen," He said quietly. Hux struggled a little less. "We're going to get through this inspection, so that we can actually come out of this trial alive. You and I are going to pretend that we love each other in order to survive." Hux stopped struggling, but still looked angrily up at Kylo. "Then you can go back to hating me until the next inspection. But please, we need to stay alive." Hux sighed, giving in. At that exact moment, the door began to open. In a split-second decision, Hux wrapped his arms around Kylo and buried his face in his shoulder. Kylo heard the door as well, so didn't question Hux.  
"Benjamin Solo?" The inspector, a severe looking older woman, was staring across the room. Kylo turned around.  
"Kylo." He corrected with an unusually charming smile, shaking the inspector's hand.  
"Armitage Hux?"  
"Y- yes." Hux stuttered, painfully aware that had his little episode been any later, they would have already failed the inspection. The inspector looked at him judgmentally.  
"Do you want to come sit down?" The inspector gestured to the sofa, and they sat down. Kylo sat in the left hand corner of the sofa, with his right arm along the back of the sofa. Hux sat down right next to him, leaning into him slightly.  
"Would you like a cookie?" Hux asked.  
"Fresh out the oven." Kylo added.  
"Yes please." Hux got up, put some cookies on a plate, and then placed the plate on the low coffee table separating them from the inspector. Hux sat back down, nestling slightly into Kylo. Kylo poked Hux gently in the ribs with the hand that was along the back of the sofa, and Hux started a little, but smiled nonetheless. "I'm going to have to get you to answer some questions, is that alright?"  
"That's fine." Kylo replied.  
"So, Armitage, how did you two meet?"  
"Well, we were both employed by Supreme Leader Snoke, and when I got made General, I got put in charge of the Finalizer and the Starkiller Base. Kylo was posted there as well, and we worked together."  
"And Kylo, do you remember when you decided that you wanted to marry Armitage?" Kylo let out a quick, silent laugh. Hux smiled. They were both thinking of the same, flippant answer to the question: it was the only way to save their lives and that they were pretending everything. Obviously that wasn't what Kylo said.  
"Well, um- I don't know. One day I looked over to him, and it just clicked. There was no difference in feeling, but I realised that I'd always felt this way about him. He was the one." Kylo smiled again, but only because he was lying through his teeth and it was all just so ridiculous.  
"So when did you realise you'd fallen for him?"  
"I came onto the bridge one night, really late, like three in the morning, thinking everyone had gone, and there, in the corner of my eye, was a flash of ginger. He was at a computer, head down, working hard, sleeves rolled up, hair a little bit messy, and the way I saw him completely changed. I don't know what happened. I felt different when I saw him, and it was- good." If the inspector had known Hux well enough to understand his borderline obsessive tendencies to order and tight sleep schedule, she would've known how much of a lie this all was. Kylo could sense Hux's mood changing, and looked over to him. Hux made eye contact with him, with soft eyes that he'd never seen from him before. However, there was a hardness in his brow that betrayed his hatred. Kylo read his thoughts. Hux was internally blasting him with all kind of horrible swear words, which made Kylo smile. They both turned their attention back to the inspector.  
"Armitage, how long have you two been together?" Hux pretended to count in his head.  
"Goodness, um- it must be coming up on three years. We haven't been married long, but we've been together for a while."  
"So you must know each other well."  
"Yes." He replied, hoping that he sounded sure of himself.  
"And tell me, Armitage, is Kylo a good kisser?" The inspector assumed a somewhat cheeky expression.  
"Devastatingly." Hux bit his lip, feeling sick as he did so.  
The inspection lasted another half an hour, with questions that they'd memorised, thankfully. No more asking about feelings.  
After the inspector left. Hux got up almost immediately and walked to the other side of the room.  
"That was horrible." Hux shivered.  
"Devastating." Kylo smirked.  
"Shut up."  
"Sorry, Armitage."  
"You know how you said you'd throw yourself out of an airlock. Please, allow me." Hux began to walk over to his room.  
"Can I have another cookie?" Kylo asked, with some mocking in his voice.  
" _No_." Hux's door shut loudly. Kylo helped himself to another cookie.


	4. Inspection Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it's been so long! :P

The second and third inspections were roughly the same as the first: unbearable. Hux still baked out of stress, but didn't have as big a reaction to Kylo eating the cookies as he did the first time. The inspections had been so flawless that Kylo had been given his lightsaber privileges back the week before the fourth inspection. Unfortunately, that made Kylo feel entitled to destroy something, and Hux had no idea how to stop him. Despite his desperate attempts to prevent problems, the countertop still got damaged.  
"Kylo, you can't just do this!" Hux complained, two days after it had happened. He was still unreasonably annoyed by it.  
"Why not? You're not the boss of me!"  
"What about the inspections?"  
"What about them?"  
"They're going to know something went wrong."  
"Hux, they're going to know that we're human."  
"What on earth do you mean by that?"  
"People argue. We can just tell them we had an argument."  
"That ended in you destroying the counter?"  
"What does that matter?"  
"They'll take your lightsaber away. They'll realise your violent temperament."  
"You're right." Kylo turned away, examining the counter.  
"Why did you do it?" Hux asked quietly.  
"I hate being stuck here. The same sky every night, the same everything."  
"Surely it was the same on Starki- oh." Hux realised how stupid he sounded: of course it was the same, Kylo destroyed everything there.  
"Yeah."  
"Why didn't you choose to do something else instead of being on the Base?"  
"Be the most powerful man in the Galaxy, bar Supreme Leader Snoke, or something else? Doesn't sound like a tough choice to me."  
"Something else being what?"  
"When I was younger I wanted to pilot." Kylo admitted, looking out of the window instead of at Hux.  
"Pilot? Really?" There was a hint of scorn in his voice, as was usual, but also a little intrigue.  
"I grew up on the Millennium Falcon, can you blame me?" Hux laughed a little.  
"But why didn't you?"  
"I wanted to blow up planets as well." Hux laughed a little more. A genuine, unusual, rare laugh. "What are we going to do about this table?"  
"What are _you_ going to do about it? I'm not involved in this." And, just like that, the regular hatred Kylo was so used to snapped back.  
"We can talk to you-know-who downstairs. She could help."  
"She could also rat us out."  
"Mind tricks."  
"Mind tricks are not the answer to everything, Ren."  
"Just trust me-"  
"Trust you?"  
"Just trust me: it will work this time."  
"It's not my problem, so if this goes wrong, then I don't care."

Kylo huffed, and left the room. Hux ran his fingers along the ruts left in the countertop, which had cooled and set in the 48 hours since Kylo lost his temper. Did he really want to be a pilot as a child? He didn't see the appeal himself, but only because he was a useless pilot and he had horrible memories of having to fix running engines for his father as punishment. Kylo returned about fifteen minutes later, with a slightly dazed-looking official, clearly under the influence of the force. Hux stepped back and watched: he'd never really seen anyone under the force so much, and it was truly intriguing.  
"You will get this counter repaired, and you will tell anyone who asks that Hux dropped a saucepan on the old one and cracked it." Hux shot Kylo a look, but Kylo was fully concentrating on the Force, and though he saw Hux, he couldn't respond.  
"I will get this counter repaired, and I will tell anyone who asks that Hux dropped a saucepan on it and cracked it." She repeated blankly, and then went to go make a call to get a replacement countertop. Kylo came and stood next to Hux, who took a tiny step away. Kylo rolled his eyes.  
"The replacement will come this afternoon." The official turned around, her voice entirely devoid of emotion. She left.  
"When will she start to behave normally again?"  
"When the task is completed."  
"Surely that's not how it works."  
"It works if I constantly give attention to it. It's not like I have anything else to pay complete attention to. It only has to be in the back of my mind." He stared down at Hux, patronising him just like that. "I'm going to go meditate." Hux sniggered, and Kylo shot him a look, leaving quickly.  
The evening before the fourth inspection, when the countertop was repaired, Kylo was lying on top of it when Hux was going to bed. He was holding his lightsaber up with the force. Hux walked over to him, wearing his pyjamas. He approached timidly, not liking how underdressed and vulnerable he was.  
"How does that work?" Hux asked. "The Force?"  
"I don't know." Kylo didn't look at Hux. "I just think about it and it happens. It needs a lot of concentration when I'm tired, but when I'm awake I hardly have to think."  
"Tired?"  
"I don't really sleep that well."  
"Oh." Hux didn't really know what to say. "I'm going to bed now. Try not to ruin the countertop. Your things are in the bathroom." Hux went over to Kylo's room, leaving Kylo on his own.  
Hux didn't know when he fell asleep, but he woke up in the middle of the night after a particularly nasty nightmare. Fortunately, Kylo didn't notice any weirdness- he was completely fast asleep. Hux walked over to the bathroom in the dark, and before he knew what was happening, he hit the floor hard, and there was light in his face. The light was from Kylo's lightsaber, which had turned on as he had tripped over it. He pulled his head away from it, but he couldn't really because his head was against the wall. He couldn't reach the button to turn it off, and he felt helpless.  
"REN!" He yelled, feeling the tip of the lightsaber singing some of his hair. " _REN!_ " Hux's breathing quickened, and he began to panic. This time, fortunately, Kylo heard, and as soon as the door opened, Kylo used the Force to get the lightsaber to his own hands, turning it off as fast as he could. He laid it down on the counter top, and looked over to Hux, who was lying on his back, getting his breath back.  
"You're not injured?" Kylo asked.  
"No. Just a few loose hairs burned off."  
"Good." Kylo walked back into his room. Hux went to the bathroom, borderline livid at Kylo for everything that just happened, especially since he was recovering from a nightmare. He washed his face with cold water, and then returned to the room, where Kylo was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling. "I'm sorry, Hux." He wasn't expecting this.  
"That's- alright." He replied, and climbed into bed. Kylo rolled over and went to sleep.  
In the morning, Hux was awake at seven, as per usual. When he was making his breakfast, the inspector arrived.  
"Where is Kylo Ren?"  
"He's still asleep. He was up late last night, so I let him sleep." He smiled fondly at his breakfast, already laying it on thick and lying through his teeth.  
"Is he always like this?"  
"Yes. His and my sleeping schedules are not completely synchronised, but neither of us mind particularly." Hux took a bite of his breakfast, and looked at the inspector, who was giving him a weird look.

"Normally people go to bed at the same time as their significant other." Hux nearly panicked, but he didn't quite.  
"I know, but given the present arrangement, it's nice to sometimes have an hour or so of the space to one's self."  
"That does make sense."  
"I think that's him now." Hux heard some rumbling from Kylo's room, and the door opened. Kylo came out in his clingy grey T-Shirt and pyjama bottoms, looking bleary-eyed, but less so than he had every morning since the lightsaber incident (Hux saw him wake up every day because he was always already awake and doing something productive). "Morning, handsome." Kylo looked around, surprised. He saw the inspector, and smiled a sleepy and slightly laughing smile at Hux, who grimaced back now that the inspector couldn't see his face.  
"Good morning. You should have woken me up."  
"You needed to sleep. You told me you weren't sleeping well." Kylo came over and sat down next to Hux, their shoulders touching. He was still warm from sleep, which Hux pretended not to be uncomfortable about. Instead, he leaned a little into him. "You're hot. Like a hot water bottle."  
"I'm always hot." Kylo scoffed, laughing. Hux rolled his eyes with a smile. "Good morning to you too." Kylo greeted the inspector, who smiled back.  
"Good morning. How are you?"  
"I'm very well, thank you. You?" Hux was surprised that Kylo could possibly be so polite. _How does this not get any better each time? It's always awful._ Hux heard Kylo's voice in his head. _I don't know how a horrible situation like this could get any better_. Hux replied.  
"I'm doing well, thank you. Now, as usual, I have some more questions to ask you. This time, I think, I'm going to ask about you instead of the other person." The two of them breathed a sigh of relief. "So, Hux, what was it like working on the Starkiller Base?"  
"Honestly, I quite liked it. It was nice to have something to organise, to be high up in orchestrating a grand plan-"  
"To be orchestrating the deaths of billions of people?" The inspector looked shocked.  
"That wasn't a highlight." Hux became serious, and tensed all over. "That was in no way a highlight. That's not what I meant."  
"What did you mean?" The inspector was keeping a cool head: Hux was not. Kylo knew this, and also knew that the inspector was actually trying to do this in order to see how Kylo would calm him down, and so he put an arm around him, and whispered into Hux's ear. The inspector thought Kylo was comforting him.  
"Hux, we're being examined on my calming you down. Calm down. Make my life easier, for once." Hux took a deep breath and calmed down a little.  
"What I meant was that I enjoyed being able to have a position that enabled me to practically run an organisation."  
"With my help." Kylo smirked.  
"With your help." Hux looked up at Kylo, who looked down him, hatred practically radiating from him. He still managed a smile.  
"I see. What was the most unusual thing you experienced whilst you were working there?"  
"Well, my Stormtroopers would shirk their duty sometimes, about once a month, and when I asked them about it, they genuinely had no idea what had happened. I tried to figure out what was going on, but there were no leads to follow up on." _I'll tell you the answer when she leaves_ Kylo spoke in Hux's mind again. He raised an eyebrow.  
"What is it?" The inspector asked.  
"Nothing. It's just not a very interesting story, come to think of it." Hux shrugged.  
"It's unusual, at least." The attention then shifted to questions about Kylo, and, during the hour that the inspector was there, back to Hux, and back and forth again.  
When the inspector left, they were about to go their separate ways for the rest of the month, when Hux stopped Kylo.  
"What did you mean by you having the answer?"  
"It was me." Kylo grinned cheekily.  
"What do you mean?"  
"Mind tricks to control troopers and erase memory. Boredom. Certain- needs to be fulfilled."  
"Please don't tell me any more." Hux felt a little sick, and realised that he really wanted the answer a whole lot less now that he had it. They then turned and went their separate ways again.


	5. Inspection Six

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the 50 kudos! (Landmark)  
> (This is only a short chapter (less than 1500 words)- sorry!)

The fifth inspection was pretty unremarkable: more questions about the other, which they had memorised the answers to previously, and more pretending that they got along, before they then completely distanced themselves from one another for another month. So far, the inspections had gone unexpectedly well, and there was nothing to worry about for the moment. By this time, they'd gotten into the swing of this, so it was easy. The night before the sixth inspection, it all seemed to be going well.  
It all seemed to be going well, that is, until about 3am.  
Both Kylo and Hux were soundly asleep until Kylo started to have a nightmare about his father. He was paralysed with fear, and overwhelmed with grief at what he had done (this only occurred when he was sleeping). Unconscious, he began to writhe about in his sleep, trying to escape the memories. At some point, he struck his arm out so hard that he pushed Hux (who was sleeping ramrod straight a good foot away from him as usual) out of the bed onto the floor. He landed on the floor in a confused lump, and, brushing his hair back out of his face, looked over to Kylo, a little short of pissed off, on account of his just having been woken up. Kylo was still moving around violently, and Hux turned the light on, standing by the bed and looking over at his counterpart, hoping that he would stop soon, so that he could get back to sleep. Even though he did seem completely annoyed, there was some sympathy still left in Hux, who was known to have frequent nightmares as well, but physically felt them a lot less, and was more emotionally concerned with them.  
After about five minutes more, Kylo woke with a jolt and a shout. He was sitting up in bed, breathing quickly, trying to recover.  
"Did I wake you up?" Kylo asked, still not completely aware of his surroundings.  
"You pushed me out of the bed and onto the floor." Hux replied, with a dry smile.  
"So I did."  
"Yes." There was a pause.  
"Sorry."  
"It's alright." There was another pause, filled with the sound of Kylo attempting to breath deeply. "Do you want to talk about it?" Hux asked. Kylo shook his head. "Do you want to project it into my mind?" He asked. He shook his head again. Hux sighed. "Look, I get nightmares as well, and I know that it's better if you talk about it."  
"You don't care. Stop pretending to."  
"Fine." Kylo rolled over, turning the light off. Hux got back into bed, rolling his eyes. That was the last time he'd show any form of compassion towards Kylo, and the only reason he'd done so was because he wanted to get back to sleep. He'd foolishly thought that attempting to be nice would actually improve the dynamic between them, which would make the inspections easier, but this apparently wasn't the case.  
The next morning, Hux still hauled himself out of bed at seven, even though he hadn't properly gone back to sleep after he was woken up. About an hour later, Kylo stumbled out of his room, looking equally as dishevelled and exhausted. It seemed that he hadn't gone to bed afterwards either. The day was slow-moving, with little remarkable about it in the morning. Kylo didn't touch his lightsaber or use the Force at all, which was actually unusual for him.  
At about lunchtime, Kylo realised something:  
"Hux?"  
"Yes?"  
"What are you wearing?"  
"What do you mean?"  
"I mean," He said, a mocking smile beginning to form on his face. "You're wearing a t-shirt."  
"Yes?" Hux looked exasperated. "What's your point?"  
"You've given up on the shoulder pads and jacket." He smirked.  
"Took you long enough to notice." He replied. Instead of his signature outfit, he was wearing dark jeans and a grey t-shirt. His hair, however, was still pristinely maintained, regardless of the absence of uniform. Kylo went about the rest of his day shooting sleepy smirks at Hux, who sneered right back every time, equally as exhausted.  
The inspector came in the middle of the afternoon; he couldn't have been much older than Hux, and seemed quite nice. When they all sat down, Hux and Kylo did what they always did- Kylo sat down with his arm around Hux's shoulders. This time felt a little odd, mainly because Hux took up far, far less space, and it made it a lot easier for it to look like they actually enjoyed each other's company (Kylo could get his arm more around Hux and so it looked cosier).  
"So, how are you guys doing?" The inspector asked.  
"Very well, thanks." Hux replied.  
"I know I'm not the normal inspector- she'll be back next time. So, what's been the best thing to happen since last time you had an inspection?" The room was silent for a few seconds, before Kylo spoke out, despite completely hearing the angry messages in Hux's head, warning him not to say what he knew he was going to say.  
"Well, Hux has stopped wearing his shoulder pads, and it means he's a better size for cuddling now." He smiled, reading Hux's mind, which was now almost entirely focused on hatred and firing every swear word imaginable in his direction. On the outside, though, he gave a small laugh, and then smiled.  
"What about for you?" He asked Hux. Hux looked at the ground, desperately trying to make something up. _Say something romantic. Go on._ He heard Kylo project into his mind.  
"I can't pick a favourite moment. They're all wonderful." He smiled. _Wow, I did not expect you to be able to be so romantic. Well done, General._ They talked with the inspector like this for a bit; the inspector was trying to make this as conversation-like as possible, which inconveniently made it harder for them to pretend to know what they were talking about. At some point in the conversation, Kylo yawned quite a large yawn, and the inspector gave them a knowing look.  
"Tired?" He asked them. They both nodded in response. "Have a late night last night?" _Just go with it._ Even in his thoughts, Kylo sounded disgusted but panicked. His expression betrayed little, but Hux knew the feeling, because he was experiencing exactly the same.  
"Yes." Kylo replied. The inspector raised his eyebrow.  
"I'm always tired after a late night with my partner." He smiled. They both smiled awkwardly back. They knew what he was implying, and felt violated just thinking about it.  
After that little blip in the conversation, it went back to normal, which was easy for them to deal with. They talked for perhaps an hour more before the inspector realised that he had run overtime, and that he needed to leave. When he did leave, Hux immediately got up, and went to do something productive. Kylo sat on the sofa for a little longer.  
"Are you alright? Aren't you going to move?" Hux asked.  
"I'm fine." Kylo replied bitterly.  
"What?" Hux snapped in response, feeling a little as if Kylo's mood was somehow his fault.  
"My scar's stopped hurting and I've had nightmares every night for the past month. There. You've got the information you need. Happy? Good. Leave." Hux huffed, knowing that this was probably a reaction to being tired, but still completely done with Kylo's attitude. As he passed Kylo on the way to his room, he jabbed at Kylo's face, hitting precisely the middle of the line of the scar on one side of his face. "Ow! What the hell?"  
"I thought you said it had stopped hurting." He said coldly, leaving before he could get any snippy reply. Kylo stood staring after where Hux went, angry at Hux for being so irritating. How he was possibly going to get through any more of this, he didn't know. They had to be in the Galactic Courts every day until the next inspection, and he didn't know how he was going to deal with that.


	6. Inspection Seven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! I know it's been a while (it feels like so so long mainly because I was away doing some musical theatre stuff), but here's the new chapter!!

The evening before the next inspection, Kylo and Hux were arguing again, this time over who was to blame for the fall of the First Order. Hux was blaming it on Kylo for being defeated by Rey, and Kylo was blaming it on Hux for the running of the Starkiller Base and the traitor Stormtrooper, without whom none of this would have happened. Because both were so proud, this had become very vicious.  
"If it weren't for your lazy attitude to everything, Ren, we could have done something nobody else had done before!"  
"Lazy attitude? Do you realise how much more work I've done than you?"  
"Don't be absurd! Whoever said that to you was just trying to save your feelings."  
"Who did Supreme Leader Snoke value more? Me or you?"  
"Just because you can use the Force! You have no other value!"  
"Who did your own father value more? Me or you?" This really hit a sore spot for Hux, whose father had known and praised Kylo.  
" _Say that again, you **bastard**!_ " Hux yelled.  
"Who's the bastard here? Me or you?" Kylo was really twisting the knife on this- he wanted to win, and he knew that this would be the way to do it. Hux swung his arm back and then threw his full force behind a punch to Kylo's face. However, Kylo never let him make contact. He simply and calmly held a hand up, and used the Force to completely freeze him in place. Kylo kept him frozen as he walked around Hux, whose expression remained completely livid. "Don't be so hurt about it." His voice was full of mocking. "It's not your fault that you were brought into existence with the reputation damage falling onto you and not to him. It's not your fault that you never lived up to anyone's expectations. It's not your fault you'll always be second best." Kylo let his hand drop, and Hux collapsed on the floor instead of fighting him more. Kylo looked down at him, smirking. His face, however, completely dropped when Hux looked up and Kylo saw how ravaged by emotional pain he was. There were tears falling from his face, and he felt this pain so much so that he couldn't get up off of the floor.  
"Don't you dare talk about my father again." He managed to choke out. "I don't want to see your face ever again, do you hear me?" He spat, sounding vulnerable. He looked even more helpless, since he wasn't wearing his First Order uniform: he looked weak. Kylo felt a little guilt flash through him, but he was able to completely overlook that in a matter of moments.  
"I didn't realise you could be so easily broken, Hux. No wonder the First Order failed with you as General."  
"GET OUT!" He shouted at the top of his lungs, his voice hoarse enough already. Kylo laughed with no remorse, throwing Hux across the floor with the Force as he left. Hux skidded along until he hit a wall, where he remained until there was not a single sound from Kylo's room.  
That night, even though the inspection was the next day, Hux slept in his own room, sleeping fitfully, constantly haunted by memories of his father that had just now come up to the surface for the first time in many years, undoing all of his attempts to suppress them. He would fall asleep for an hour or so before he felt himself being wrenched out of sleep by a nightmare or particularly painful memory, where he would lie paralysed with terror or misery until he slipped back into sleep. This process repeated for the entire night, and so it was no surprise that he looked terrible when he woke up for the last time, about 45 minutes before normal. Thankfully, there was no sign of the inspector yet, which meant that their argument and not sleeping in the same room didn't yet have an adverse effect on their inspection.  
The inspector came at about nine o'clock, and Hux was still alone, sitting at the kitchen counter, sipping at a glass of water.  
"Where is Kylo Ren?"  
"Sleeping."  
"Again?"  
"Yes." He murmured, taking another sip.  
"Is everything alright?" Hux sighed, knowing that he had to be honest.  
"We argued last night."  
"Oh, really? What about?"  
"I honestly can't remember how it started. It started with something ridiculous, and then escalated. It got really nasty, and we haven't talked it out. I didn't really sleep last night."  
"Is that why you look so tired?"  
"Yes." Hux looked over to Kylo's room, wondering if he could wake Kylo up without the inspector knowing that they really didn't like each other and the argument was a real problem that neither had the heart to fix.  
"Do you want to go talk it through?"  
"Yes I would."  
"Privately?" Hux felt relief wash over him: this was his opportunity to forewarn Kylo privately that the inspector was here.  
"Yes please."  
"Go ahead."  
"I'll just make him a coffee first." Hux was doing this to procrastinate talking to Kylo, whom he really didn't want to see. He made the coffee without really thinking what he was doing, and took it through to Kylo's room. After the door shut behind him, Hux put the mug down on top of the dresser, and crossed the room to Kylo. Kylo was sleeping soundly, or so it seemed, and Hux felt hatred rush through him: how could someone be so unshaken after everything that had unfolded? Maybe, Hux thought, that was why Brendol Hux had liked Kylo so much more, maybe it was because of the completely unflinching sense of inhumanity about him when it came to settling disputes. Hux knew he was too emotional when people personally attacked him, and seeing Kylo so uncaring nearly sent him over the edge. Knowing the inspector was on the other side of the door and could hear if Hux started shouting. Instead, he grabbed Kylo by the shoulders and shook him violently.  
"What?" Kylo rolled over from his back and onto his side, ignoring Hux.  
"The inspector's here."  
"You let me sleep last time."  
"Yes, well, I didn't hate you quite as much then."  
"That's great to know."  
"Get up."  
"I just fell asleep."  
"What do you mean?"  
"I just fell asleep." Kylo rolled over until he was on his front, and buried his head under his pillow.  
"What do you mean, you just fell asleep?"  
"I mean," He said, moving to lean up on his elbows, facing Hux. "I didn't sleep at all last night, and I fell asleep at seven." Hux's strong frown softened in surprise.  
"I made you coffee." He replied, his expression hardening again. He brought the coffee over, and Kylo took it, sitting up properly, leaning on the back of the bed with his legs crossed. Kylo took a sip.  
"You remembered."  
"What?"  
"Black coffee. Sugar."  
"Oh." They fell into an uncomfortable silence for a moment, with Hux looming over him. They both heard footsteps outside the door, and Hux sat down on the edge of the bed, looking over at Kylo. The inspector came in.  
"Is everything alright?"  
"I didn't sleep last night." Hux was surprised that Kylo admitted that, but played along anyway.  
"Neither did your husband." Hux visibly stiffened with this label, but the inspector was looking at Kylo just then. Kylo nudged him with his foot as a warning to relax or else the inspector would know they disliked each other.  
"You didn't?"  
"Not really." Kylo knew it was his fault, and projected a weak apology into Hux's mind, which was ignored.  
"Well, we'll probably sleep fine tonight. After all, we've made amends." Kylo said out loud, at the same time he was projecting with the Force.  
"Yes." Hux added in agreement.  
"Do you remember the cause of the argument?" The inspector asked Kylo.  
"I honestly can't remember how it started. It started with something ridiculous, and then escalated." Kylo shrugged. The inspector quirked an eyebrow, but didn't react otherwise. "Would you two like to come and sit in the living space for the rest of the inspection?" This was an order, and they followed. Kylo was still exhausted, and hit the doorframe with his shoulder a little when he left, because he was too tired to be properly coordinated.  
The interview was quick, because the two of them were both too tired to make it worthwhile. When the inspector left, Hux got up, and Kylo lay straight down on the sofa, and began to fall asleep right there. Thinking he was asleep, Hux went to leave.  
"Hux." He heard a mumble. Kylo was looking up at him, his dark eyes nearly closed.  
"What?" There was a pause.  
"Don't make it so obvious that we hate each other."  
"What?"  
"You shivered when she called you my husband." Hux shivered again.  
"It's a disgusting concept."  
"What do you mean?"  
"I would never marry you if it hadn't been a matter of literal life and death."  
"I thought you were going to say something against a man marrying a man." Kylo laughed sleepily.  
"Of course I wouldn't. That's a horrible thing to say. I just wouldn't have married _you_ if I had any real choice in it."  
"I'll try not to take that as an insult." Hux turned to leave again.  
"Hux?"  
"What?"  
"Ignoring who I am, you don't mind being married to a man?"  
"Of course not."  
"Wait, does that mean you're-"  
"Go to sleep, Ren. I don't want to see you for a while. You've annoyed me enough." Hux actually left this time, and Kylo went to sleep almost instantly.


	7. Inspection Nine

It had taken a long while for things to get back to normal after that argument. They hadn't spoken to each other on any day apart from the eighth inspection by the time the ninth rolled around. The main reason they hadn't talked was because of an underlying fear they both held that another argument like the last would happen, which Kylo didn't want to happen because he didn't want to fail an inspection for arguing, and Hux didn't want to happen because he didn't want to get hurt like that again. The nightmares that occurred as a result of that had already lasted until a couple of weeks before the eighth inspection, and he really didn't want a repeat of that kind of torture.  
Somewhere between inspections eight and nine, something went wrong with the food order.  
"Kylo, where's the food order?"  
"I don't know, you usually do it."  
"We take turns doing it. It was your turn!"  
"No it wasn't."  
"Please say you didn't forget." Kylo didn't reply. Hux made a sound of frustration. "Kylo we have nothing to eat, and we don't have the opportunity to order again for a week."  
"There are emergency rations."  
"What do you mean?"  
"The kind of thing you pour water on and it makes bread."  
"Are you joking? Those taste disgusting. There's no way I'm going to live off of those until the next order."  
"Fine. Go hungry." Kylo walked off.  
Hux stayed true to his word. Three days later, and he still hadn't eaten anything. For the first few days, Kylo didn't actually notice that his counterpart wasn't eating, but when Hux nearly passed out on the third day, he knew something was wrong. It was when Kylo had just emerged from his room to eat his own lunch, and Hux got up to make himself scarce, as they did every day. However, when Hux stood up, his knees gave way, and he lost control of his body temporarily. When he hit the floor, Kylo walked over quickly, to see what had happened.  
"Hux?"  
"I'm fine. Leave me alone." Hux tried to get up again, but he simply didn't have the strength to stand.  
"Hux, what did you do?"  
"Nothing. I'm fine. Leave me alone."  
"You haven't eaten, have you?"  
"Leave. Me. Alone."  
"Hux, when was the last time you ate?"  
"It's none of your business!" Hux snapped back. Kylo was beginning to get frustrated. Hux was lying at his feet, his face and frame more hollow than usual, unable to get up and refusing to admit that there was something wrong.  
"Hux!"  
"Why do you care?!"  
"I don't need you dying before the next inspection!"  
"I'm not going to die." He replied weakly.  
"Carry on like this and you will! When was the last time you ate?"  
"Before we ran out of food." Hux tried to get up again, and only just made it to the chair that he was formerly sitting in. He leaned heavily on the counter top and Kylo went around to the other side of the counter top so he could look Hux in the eye.  
"Hux, you'll die."  
"Why do you care?"  
"I don't need another murder investigation on me before we've gone through the trial, and as much I like to see you suffer, I need you to survive."  
"I will. You can watch me suffer until the next order comes in."  
"Why does eating the emergency rations bother you so much?"  
"I don't like them."  
"Well maybe you should start putting your own survival over stupid eating preferences." Kylo wasn't shouting now, but his voice still had a razor-sharp edge to it.  
"I don't like them because I was made to eat them every day of my miserable childhood whilst the rest of my family ate whatever their hearts desired in front of me when I only got quarter portions if I got to eat at all. They remind me or a part of my life I wish to forget."  
"You still need to eat."  
"Have you no sensitivity to the fact that if I eat them I'll just throw it up because I can't stand the taste?" Kylo sighed, and ran a hand through his hair.  
"You have to eat."  
"I can last a week. I've done it before."  
"Just because it worked the last time does not mean it's a good idea or that it will work this time, Hux."  
"Leave me alone, Ren." Hux muttered.  
"I came here to eat." Kylo rolled his eyes, and went to go get some water to pour on the solid block that constituted his lunch. The block began to turn into food, and the smell alone was making Hux retch. Kylo moved his plate away from Hux, registering properly for the first time that the food that they had left was a real problem. "Hux, you have to eat, you'll die otherwise."  
"Stop." He ordered, but his voice didn't convey any force. Kylo took a mouthful of his food, and then had an idea.  
"You will eat the rest of the food on my plate without complaint or negative reaction." Kylo waved a hand, and suddenly Hux was under the influence of the Force.  
"I will eat the rest of the food on your plate without complaint or negative reaction." Hux's face went blank, and Kylo sat watching Hux eat, making sure to keep adequate concentration on what he was doing. He did feel a little bad for forcing Hux to eat, but this seemed to be the only way at the moment. When Hux had finished, Kylo to the plate away from him, and snapped Hux out of his daze. Kylo went to go make some more food, for himself this time.  
"Better?" Kylo asked.  
"What happened?" Hux received no reply. "What did you do?"  
"I did nothing. You ate."  
"I di- you bastard! You used a mind trick, didn't you?"  
"Well, now you have enough energy to survive a little longer, so-"  
"You can't just do that!"  
"Actually, I can. And I did." Kylo started eating his own food, and Hux, although he wouldn't admit he now felt a lot better, stormed off. Kylo finished his meal and left for his own room.  
After a few days of Kylo using the Force to get Hux to eat, the regular food order, which Hux had put in, arrived, and everything went back to normal. When the night before the next inspection came, Hux appeared to be back at full energy, which meant that his ability to be hateful towards Kylo had completely renewed. Currently, this feeling was relatively subdued, but Kylo knew that this could potentially rise up at any moment.  
That evening, Hux went to sleep earlier than normal, which confused and intrigued Kylo. As a result, Kylo followed him, pretending to get something from his room. He was somewhat surprised to find his counterpart completely asleep. The week with little food seemed to really have taken a toll on him, and so Kylo let him sleep. As he turned to leave, he heard a rustling from behind him, and he turned to face Hux, who was now sitting up.  
"What do you want, Ren?" He asked, his voice heavy with sleep already.  
"Nothing. I was looking for something. It wasn't here."  
"Alright." He yawned, and lay back down. Kylo turned and walked to the door, and when he reached the door, he looked back, and Hux was already fast asleep.  
The next morning, Hux woke up first, a little later than normal, and rolled out of bed. His shoulder was touching Kylo's arm when he woke up, and this made him start back a little and roll over. In doing so he disturbed Kylo a little, who rolled over and went back to sleep as if nothing at all had happened. Half an hour later, however, he appeared, looking pretty awake in comparison his usual morning appearance. He immediately went to go make a coffee, and as soon as that task was completed, the inspector made an appearance. It was unusual for the inspector to appear in the early-ish morning three times in a row (the previous two had also been quite early), but Kylo assumed that that was because the visits were indeed random.  
"It's unusal to find you awake at this time of the morning, Kylo." The inspector noted.  
"I'm surprised as well." Kylo replied.  
"And I see you've stuck to your regular routine, then?" She addressed Hux.  
"Indeed."  
"Not completely, though." Kylo added.  
"What do you mean?" Hux asked.  
"You went to bed an hour earlier than normal last night." Hux opened his mouth to make a borderline defensive statement, but then though better of it and smiled instead.  
"I guess it's getting a little dull when there's nothing to do. I know this isn't supposed to be fun, and I know we have done some things, like going to give statements at the court, but it is awfully grating sometimes." Hux paused, thinking of something to say to convince the inspector that his life here wasn't the worst he could imagine. "Thank goodness I've got him, though, because otherwise I'd probably go mad."  
"Or go hungry." Kylo added, with a small smile. Hux laughed a little, even though he was still bitter over Kylo force-feeding him.  
"That's true."  
"Can you not cook?" The inspector asked. Kylo went to go wash up his coffee mug, and then sit down next to Hux, giving his shoulder (for appearances' sake) a gentle, friendly squeeze.  
"I can, especially baking, but sometimes I just forget."  
"You're also a very picky eater." Kylo added.  
"To some extent." The inspector quirked an eyebrow. "Well, a certain someone forgot to put in the food order, and so we were living on emergency rations, which taste disgusting."  
"But he had to eat."  
"Which I sort of didn't."  
"So I gave him some- encouragement." _Encouragement? Yeah right._ Hux thought. _I heard that._ Kylo replied.  
"I'm glad to hear that you tackled the problem together."  
"Is there any way that we can get something to do?" Hux asked, changing the subject. "As in, a game of chess or something?"  
"Of course. Considering you have behaved so well so far, I may also be able to get you boys a bottle of something strong for a couple of weeks' time."  
"Sounds good to me." Kylo replied.  
"So, space chess and alcohol?"  
"Yes please."  
"I'll see what I can do."  
"Thanks."  
The inspection seemed to drag on for a really long time after this, and once the inspector had left, it was lunchtime. Just as Kylo was about to start making himself something to eat, the Galactic Official (whom they had not seen for quite a while) appeared.  
"General Hux, you are required to give audience to a judge in front of a hologram."  
"What for?"  
"They didn't say. They just said that it was urgent."  
"Alright." He replied, leaving without any further argument. Kylo watched him leave, now distracted from his eating. He didn't end up eating at all until Hux returned, looking just as calm and professional as he did when he left, if not more so.  
"What happened?"  
"They wanted to know what a person would experience when under the influence of the Force."  
"And what did you say?"  
"It feels like you're a puppet on strings, completely unable to control what you're doing, but you don't feel like you want to resist, either. It's a sort of- magnetic pull where it feels like you're doing what you want out of your free will, and there's nothing to tell you that you're not until you're dropped out of it, and it feels like you've been dropped on the floor and it all comes rushing back to you."  
"Did you describe to them the whispering?"  
"No, I- wait, what do you mean?" Kylo cursed himself under his breath: he'd said too much.  
"The whispering."  
"What is that?"  
"Nothing."  
"Was it something Snoke did to you?"  
"Yes. Just drop it."  
"He was inside your head, wasn't he? Is that how you were lured over? Is that how he broke you so you weren't so insolent?" Hux felt the need to be horrible, because now he finally had the opportunity to get back at Kylo.  
"You will drop the subject immediately and not pick it up for the rest of today."  
"I will drop the subject immediately and not pick it up for the rest of today." When Kylo dropped him out of the influence of the Force, Hux tried to pick the subject up again, but he found no sound coming out of his mouth. "Ren!" Hux shouted in frustration. He turned to leave.  
"Hux, you need to eat."  
"Leave me alone, Ren." Hux slammed his door and left.


	8. Inspection Eleven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Thanks for holding on so long to get this chapter! (I've been away again, this time doing watersports and meeting some amazing people)

Kylo Ren was useless at Space Chess.  
Absolutely useless.  
Maybe it was partly due to the fact that his father always persuaded Chewbacca to let him win when he played on the Millennium Falcon, but it was mainly due to his complete and utter tactlessness. This was especially laughable to Hux, because Kylo had the ability to read minds. However, every single time the two of them played, Hux always won.  
The Space Chess set had come with the arrival of the inspector the month after they had asked for it, but the alcohol hadn't made an appearance yet. That was coming in time for this inspection. They at least had the chess to tide them other.  
At this particular moment, it was late afternoon, on the day of the inspection. Kylo and Hux had given up pretending to enjoy each other's company, and so now were engaged in a particularly aggressive game of Space Chess. Kylo, about ten moves in, was already getting frustrated. Hux was leaning back in his chair, calmly observing an increasingly flustered Kylo.  
"You're a sadist, Hux! You want to watch me suffer."  
"I would never want to see you suffer, Ren." He shot back, his retort packed to the brim with sarcasm.  
"Your move." Kylo spoke through his teeth. Hux looked down at the board, and calmly and quietly wiped another of Kylo's simulations. Kylo made a loud noise of frustration, prompting Hux to smirk.  
"How are you doing this?"  
"I'm pretty good at keeping my mind blank."  
"How does that help?"  
"How do you think? You honestly don't think I know that you've been reading my mind constantly since we started the game?"  
"How was I not alert to the fact that you knew?"  
"We spend a lot of time together."  
"Umm, Hux..."  
"Trust you to think of it as intimacy, Ren."  
"That was not my doing."  
"Well, I've been in your company for an uncomfortably long amount of time. It's almost been a year. Of course I know how to blanket the fact that I can tell when you're reading my mind."  
"Almost a year?"  
"Today marks the end of the eleventh month."  
"Seriously?" Hux nodded quietly.  
"Your move, Ren." Kylo moved his piece, and Hux immediately took that piece out with one of his own. Kylo leaned over, staring intently and slightly angrily at the board. Hux sat back again, smirking. He could sense Kylo's building frustration again, and once again, he felt Kylo probing in his head for an indication as to what his next move would be.  
_Boo._ Kylo physically jumped when Hux thought this, which made him laugh that genuine, rare laugh that was hardly ever heard. Kylo looked over to Hux, and smiled back in response to the laugh. Hux's own smile dropped when he saw this, and Kylo rolled his eyes, moving his piece, and taking Hux's. Hux, who hadn't seen this coming, redoubled his efforts to completely thrash Kylo at this game.  
As a result, when the inspector arrived, she arrived to the view of Hux and Kylo staring angrily at the game of chess, barely moving due to all of the concentration. They didn't notice the inspector come in, and she observed them, completely frozen with concentration.  
"Wow," She remarked. "The testosterone is tangible." The pair jumped, and looked over to the inspector. Kylo got up first, and Hux very quickly took Kylo's final piece. When Kylo noticed, he shot Hux a look, which made Hux laugh. Kylo grabbed Hux and pulled him in by the waist. Hux stumbled into him, and with their chests pressed together, Kylo whispered in Hux's ear.  
"I'll kill you." He smiled. Hux laughed, and leant into Kylo's shoulder, enveloped in him. Hux fought the urge to tell Kylo something, but said it anyway, because it would contribute to the act they were putting on, and only for that reason.  
"You smell good." He mumbled into Kylo's shoulder. Kylo laughed a little, and it reverberated through Hux.  
"Do I?"  
"Mmhmm." He replied. _And you meant it, too._ Kylo added. _This is new._  
Shut up, Ren. Kylo separated himself from Hux, and looked down at him, making eye contact and smiling. Hux rolled his eyes and smirked.  
"I brought a gift." The inspector was looking at them with a smile. She produced a bottle of whiskey from behind her back, and handed it to Hux. "I think I trust you more with alcohol than him." She laughed a little.  
"Well, I trust me more as well."  
"Oh really?"  
"This one can't hold his alcohol." Hux looked over to Kylo.  
"Can't he?" Hux thought he was going to lie through this in order to humiliate Kylo.  
"Not at all." Kylo agreed with this statement.  
"What about you?"  
"I grew up in the ranks of the First Order." He joked, which constituted a reply. Everyone knew that anyone in the First Order could hold it better than anyone. In fact, it had become something of a joke throughout the galaxies.  
"Fair enough." Hux put the bottle on the counter, and they sat down on the sofa.  
The inspection went as usual, and they were starting to get a little bored of the format, the inspector included. It was almost dinner time, and Hux decided to take action to break up the monotony.  
"Are you hungry?" Hux asked Kylo and the inspector.  
"Are you offering to make dinner?" Kylo looked at him.  
"Yes. And I know you're hungry. You're-"  
"Always hungry." Kylo finished. Hux stood up, and ruffled Kylo's hair.  
"Are you hungry?" Hux repeated to the inspector. "I'd very happily invite you to dinner." He smiled.  
"I'd be very grateful." The inspector replied. Hux saw a little fear flash over the inspector's face behind the smile. He knew it was because, no matter how domestic they seemed, he and Kylo were both war criminals.  
"Any allergies I should be aware of?" Hux asked.  
"None." She replied. Hux went over to the stove?  
"Pasta? It'll be quick."  
"Sure." Kylo and the inspector replied. Hux set the water to boil, and just as he'd finished that, the temperature suddenly dropped. Kylo stood up in confusion, and Hux walked briskly over to the thermostat.  
"It's not the thermostat." He commented.  
"It's the entire heating system." Kylo replied. Hux started maniacally running and checking the fittings to the airlock doors and windows. "Honey, what are you doing?"  
"Checking the fittings."  
"Why?"  
"Space is cold."  
"Oh." Kylo realised what Hux was doing: he had an irrational fear of the window fittings letting the air out: that had happened to him once on The Finalizer when it was under construction, and he had nearly died, and was never really the same. He quietly explained as much to the inspector, who nodded slowly. Hux, after satisfactorily checking all of the fittings, put the pasta in, a little bit rattled. Kylo went into his room, fetched several blankets, and returned. Hux was watching the pasta intently, trying to settle his rattled nerves. Kylo approached him from behind, wrapping him with a blanket like in a cocoon. Hux jumped at first, but gladly accepted the blanket. "You alright?" Kylo asked. Hux nodded.

After dinner, the heating still hadn't recovered, and Hux was still a little bit shaken. As a result, he downed a shot of whiskey in order to warm up and settle his nerves. It worked, and Kylo came up to join him at the counter.  
"Only one?" Kylo asked, looking down at the shot glass, which Hux was about to wash up. Hux passed him a glass, and stared him straight in the eye.  
"Try me."  
"Are you sure?"  
"Try me." He challenged again. Kylo poured out two shots: one for himself, and one for Hux.  
And so they took shot after shot after shot. Hux, given his upbringing, easily drank Kylo under the table, and had to stop when Kylo refused to stop drinking as much as him in order to prove something. Hux could hold it down, but Kylo was a lightweight, and any more alcohol would do him some serious damage. He quietly, when Kylo wasn't concentrating, capped the bottle, which had a tiny bit left, and put it up on a shelf in the cupboard.  
"Did we run out?" Kylo slurred.  
"Yes."  
"Did you drink any?"  
"I drank more than you." Hux smirked.  
"Noooo you didn't."  
"I did." The smirk melted into a smile. Kylo was really drunk, and somehow his complete demeanour had changed: he appeared more now like a puppy than his usual 'air of sulky teenager'.  
"Noooooo."  
"I drank you completely under the table, Ren."  
"Did you call me Ben?"  
"No. I called you Ren."  
"Ben! Ben Ben Ben!"  
"Are you alright, _Ben_?"  
"You called me Ben! I got you!" He giggled. Hux rolled his eyes, smiling. "I can call you Armitage because you called me Ben!" He taunted in a sing-song voice.  
"You absolutely cannot."  
"I absolutely can!"  
"No."  
"Fight me." Hux shook his head at this.  
"Don't be-"  
"Absurd, Ren." He completed, furrowing his brow, mocking him. Hux laughed. Kylo, seeing that Hux was laughing, took the decision to continue his impression. He got up, swaying quite a lot, and proceeded to impersonate Hux, starting with the pacing. He put his arms messily behind his back, and started pacing back and forth. Hux, due to the sheer hilarity of what he was watching, laughed despite himself. "Absolutely absurd. I don't understand how you get anything done." He turned on his heel, and stumbled.  
"If you're going to impersonate me, Ren, at least walk in a straight line."  
"I'm walking as straight as I can. I'm not much straighter myself." Kylo stopped pacing, realised what he said, and tried to rectify the situation, but, being drunk, didn't do a very good job of it. "I mean- I'm- I-"  
"You're not straight?" Hux suggested.  
"How did you know?"  
"Because you just told me?" He laughed.  
"Oh." Kylo laughed, a little at first, and then a lot. "I'm tired, sorry." Kylo turned to go to his room, and staggered, nearly falling over, had it not been for Hux getting up quickly and catching him. "You're strong. You caught me." Hux laughed.  
"I did. Well done, Ren." Kylo leaned his full weight onto Hux, who staggered a bit.  
"You're going to fall!"  
"If you keep wriggling I will." Kylo made a deliberate effort to make Hux fall over, and it worked; in an instant, the pair were on the floor, Kylo on top of Hux, and Hux struggling to breathe.  
"You fell!"  
"Wonderful observation there, Ren. Please get off."  
"What's the magic word?"  
"I can't breathe, Ren."  
"Nope."  
"Please. I already said please."  
"Oh." He laughed, and rolled over. Hux took a deep breath in, feeling a lot better now that he could inhale. Kylo got up (on his third attempt at doing so), and staggered over to his room. "It's still cold, want to come join me?" He drawled, leaning heavily on the doorframe.  
"No."  
"Are you-"  
"No." Hux's smile dropped, because even though his counterpart was drunk, it was an unacceptable proposition, wasn't it? _But,_ Hux thought, the alcohol fighting his reasoning, _we_ are _married, and it's cold and dark and the cold will give me nightmares of the accident on the Finalizer like it always does._  
"Going once, going twice-"  
"Why not?"  
"You'll regret it in the morning." Kylo smirked lazily, providing the perfect counter-argument.  
"I'm cold. Consider this a practical arrangement." He responded. And so, Hux followed Ren into his room, for the first time without having been forced to due to an inspection.


	9. Inspection Twelve

As Kylo expected, Hux completely regretted his decision. He regretted that decision for the entire space between the inspections, and stayed in his room for pretty much the entire time between the inspections. Kylo only saw him once, and that was when he was bringing food to his room. As long as he was eating, Kylo wasn't too bothered about Hux. Anyway, it meant that he had the whole space to himself.  
Hux finally emerged on the night before the inspection, and refused to make eye contact with Kylo.  
"Hux, this has to stop."  
"Kylo-"  
"Hux, this has to stop." He repeated, standing in front of Hux until Hux moved his eyes up to make eye contact. Even though it was for a brief second, they still made eye contact. Hux went to go make himself a cup of tea. "Tea? This is new?"  
"It's been a month."  
"Since the tea?"  
"Yes, Kylo, since the tea. What else would it be?"  
"Hux, calm down." Hux didn't respond. There was an awkward pause. "Two weeks ago was our one year anniversary." He added with a wry smile.  
"Don't you get it, Kylo? It's all fake!" Hux snapped.  
"OK, there is clearly something here that we need to sort out."  
"There's nothing we need to sort out. I made a bad decision, and that's it."  
"Alright, but that was in the past."  
"Are you suggesting I just forget about it?"  
"Well-" He paused.  
"Well? Well what?"  
"Yes. Yes I am. You need to calm down, and that's it."  
"Kylo, it's not that easy."  
"I'll try not to take your upset so personally." He huffed.  
"That's not what I meant."  
"We need to sort this out." Hux looked over the rim of his mug at Kylo. "Hux, are you alright?"  
"Why?"  
"You look exhausted."  
"I'm fine. See you later. This evening. As usual." He left with his tea.  
"Hux, if you regret it, if you truly regret it, then just blame it on the alcohol." Hux paused at the door, but then entered his room and shut the door with no more words. Kylo was left standing on his own, something he had become so accustomed to over the past few weeks.  
That evening, he and Hux barely exchanged a single word. Hux's eyes were deeply shadowed, and his entire demeanour seemed to express hatred towards both himself and Kylo, and, quite possibly, the entire universe. It was hard to tell from the distance that Kylo kept himself at.  
When they slept, all of the space between them that they had almost eradicated over time came back, and suddenly there was an unspoken and invisible chasm between them, and Kylo suddenly felt completely alone. Kylo fell asleep quickly, however, perhaps even faster than when he was alone in the bed.  
He woke up at about nine, and was more than surprised to find Hux still asleep. The room was too dark to see him properly, but Kylo could sense him with the Force, as well as hear his soft breathing and feel his gentle warmth. He got up, trying to make as little noise as possible, and took his clothes to the bathroom, to shower, and then change there, so he didn't wake Hux up.  
He was just leaving the bathroom when he next saw Hux. Kylo watched him emerge from his room, his eyes full of sleep, his hair scruffy, and all of his menace completely gone, for real this time, not just hidden away for the sake of inspections.  
And right in that moment, something in Kylo Ren came completely undone.  
He didn't intend for anything to change, but in that instant, he realised a terrifying and undeniable fact.  
He was in love.  
It all happened so quickly and unexpectedly that he didn't know what to do. So he stood there, frozen, heart beating quickly and strongly and erratically.  
"What are you gawking at, Ren?" His voice still carried sleep with it, but the bitterness was beginning to show again. Kylo didn't reply. Hux passed by him, and Kylo still didn't move.  
When Hux emerged again from the shower, Kylo was sitting on the sofa, elbows on knees, resting his head in his hands, trying to get his head around what he was feeling. It had always been there, bubbling underneath the surface, but today? Today, something had broken, and all of that emotion had come shooting to the surface, drowning everything else out.  
"Are you alright, Ren? You seem to be troubled." Kylo looked round at Hux, who was dressed and ready for the day now, but as of today (for Kylo) was no less appealing now. Kylo looked at his feet.  
"Leave it. You don't want to get involved."  
"Don't I?"  
"You don't."  
"Alright then. Tell me when the inspector gets here. When the inspector comes, at least pretend that you're not having some kind of issue." He left for his room, and that was it.

When the inspector came, Hux was out of his room, making a cup of tea. Kylo was still struggling, especially because he knew he could give nothing away to Hux. There was no way he could deal with another hateful look, especially because the issue hit too close to home. He couldn't deal with more heartbreak, basically. Hux was about to turn and walk into his room when the inspector arrived, and so changed his course and sat down close to Kylo, snuggling into him, even though he only did this when Kylo put his arm around him in front of the inspector. Kylo dutifully put his arm around Hux, on the verge of tears, but masking it so well that nobody noticed.  
"How've you been?" Kylo asked the instructor.  
"Very well. You?"  
"It's been alright." By this, he meant it had all been going perfectly well until this morning.  
"I'm glad to hear it. So, what have you been getting up to recently?"  
"Not much. I'm still hold probably the universe's longest losing streak for Space Chess." He replied, smiling a little. Hux turned his head to him, and Kylo turned his head to. Their noses were so close to touching. This wasn't fair.  
"And you can read minds." Hux commented. Kylo read Hux's mind now: nothing but the usual blast of dislike.  
"Yes I can." He smiled back, grateful that he could get this close to Hux without being murdered, but dying inside because he wanted to be closer.  
"Are you alright?" Hux asked quietly.  
"Yeah." He managed a smile, and they both looked back at the inspector.  
"So, Hux, tell me, what's the secret to beating Kylo Ren at Space Chess?"  
"Play Space Chess." He smiled wryly. Kylo looked at him, examining his profile as he spoke. "But honestly, I was raised from a young age being able to come up with tactics that have been mostly successful." Hux noticed Kylo was looking at him. "What?"  
"I love you." Kylo didn't know what he said until he'd said it. He could see, for the briefest moment, repulsion flash over Hux's face, and this broke his heart a little more.  
"I know." He smiled back. Kylo rolled his eyes.  
"That's what my parents always said to each other." He smiled quickly, distracted by his thoughts, and desperately trying to get a grip.  
"Your mother is doing very well, by the way. She's spearheading the rebuilding of the places harmed by, well-"  
"Me. I'm glad to hear that she's doing something. She was always so hard to deal with when she was doing nothing." Kylo looked at his feet, and the inspector changed the subject to something a little more light-hearted and conversational, nothing that could particularly emotionally affect someone. She kept the conversation like this for the rest of the inspection, vaguely aware of something being wrong with Kylo, but not completely sure what. She left quickly, and Kylo got up to get a drink, anxious to distance himself from Hux before he said or did anything stupid.  
"Wow, Kylo, you were really convincing today." Hux sneered. He was being genuine, but had a mockery in his voice.  
"Stop it." Kylo muttered back.  
"It's not like you actually meant it, why are you so offended? Take it as a compliment. You were believable."  
"Thanks." He barely got this word out.  
"How did you do it? How could you just look me straight in the eye and say 'I love you' and not give it away? I need to know how to do this for the next time." Hux didn't realise he was twisting the knife on this one. Kylo didn't reply for a long amount of time. "Kylo, can you hear me?" Hux walked over to him, and Kylo turned, looking at him. Hux swore under his breath when he saw the expression painted across Kylo's face, knowing exactly what it meant. "You-" Kylo looked at the floor. "You weren't pretending." Kylo turned to leave, and then thought better of it, knowing that Hux deserved an explanation: he was, after all, the other party involved in this.  
"I wasn't."  
"How long has it been?"  
"It's always been there. I just didn't know it until this morning."  
"This morning?" Kylo nodded.  
"When I first saw you this morning. You looked- calm. Happy. There was nothing vicious or bitter or angry about how you looked. I don't know, it all sounds so stupid." Kylo saw Hux's expression change. "Don't give me that look."  
"What look?"  
"Pity. You're pitying me because I fell in love with you and I still can't believe it and I don't know what's happening and it's all so crazy in my head right now and you're looking at me as if I were a charity case and I can't deal with that because it breaks my heart to know it's a one-way thing."  
"I'm sorry, Ren. I truly am." Hux looked at his feet, unsure of what to do.  
"I'm sorry too."


	10. Inspection Fourteen

Hux kept his distance from Kylo over the next two months. There wasn't an inspection the month after that fateful last one, because Kylo was needed to give some more statements in the Galactic Court, which was a relief to the both of them because it gave them time to properly figure out what they were going to do. When it came to the night before the next inspection, they sat across from each other at the kitchen counter. Kylo looked down from his hands, refusing to look up. Hux was watching him.  
"Kylo?"  
"Yeah?"  
"Look at me." Kylo shook his head.  
"Kylo, come on." Kylo raised his eyes up to look at Hux. They made eye contact, but Kylo couldn't hold his gaze any more and looked back to his hands. "Kylo-"  
"I can't." Hux sighed, and very slowly, and very carefully placed his two fingers under Kylo's chin and tilted his head up. Kylo looked at Hux, and brushed his hand away. "Stop."  
"Sorry."  
"We need to sort this out." Hux got up, and started pacing, and came to a conclusion remarkably quickly.  
"Just the inspection days. During the inspections. You can behave as you like, and I will act as if it's real."  
"I guess."  
"It's better than nothing, Ren. But please- no kissing or anything."  
"I understand." Kylo watched Hux from where he was sitting.  
"You look miserable." Hux commented.  
"I am miserable."  
"I'm sorry."  
"It's not your fault." Hux noticed a loose section of hair, and brushed it back. Kylo found himself staring at Hux's hair, watching how it reflected the light like fire.  
"Kylo-"  
"Sorry." Kylo got up to leave.  
Kylo, unlike normal, was in bed first before Hux, When Hux did climb into bed, he stayed a good distance from Kylo, who was half asleep.  
"Hux?" He murmured, his face slightly buried in the pillow.  
"Yes, it's me." Kylo sat up a little, noticing that his voice sounded odd.  
"Hux?"  
"What?"  
"How much have you drunk?"  
"Nothing."  
"Hux, I can smell it on you. How much did you drink?"  
"Nothing."  
"Did you finish the bottle?"  
"No." Kylo went into Hux's head. He definitely had finished the bottle.  
"Head. Out." Hux muttered vaguely. Kylo did as he was told, and Hux rolled over closer to Kylo. Kylo sighed, and rolled over so he wasn't facing Hux, and fell asleep.  
In the morning, Kylo was very surprised when he found Hux still in bed, and snuggled up in Kylo's arms. Kylo had his nose buried in Hux's hair when he woke up. He sighed, and got out of bed, knowing that Hux would go berserk and think that Kylo meant for it to happen whilst he was asleep. He ambled over to the kitchen area, tying his hair back in a bun, and trying to ignore Hux's scent tangled with his own. He started to make eggs for breakfast, and made enough for the both of them. He was just putting it onto plates when Hux emerged, looking a little worse for wear.  
"Good morning." Kylo greeted. Hux mumbled incoherently as a reply. "Are you ok?"  
"Hangover."  
"You drank more when we drank together, and didn't get a hangover then. Are you ok though?"  
"I've been worse." Kylo slid a plate of eggs over.  
"Eat."  
"Thanks." They ate in uncomfortable silence, both still in their pyjamas. The inspector came just before they'd finished.  
"Good morning, boys."  
"Morning." Hux replied, trying to put on a happy face.  
"Are you alright, Hux?"  
"Hangover." He replied.  
"Were both of you drinking last night?"  
"Just me."  
"How come?" Hux realised he'd talked himself into a corner.  
"The heating broke again." Kylo filled in for him, and, as uncomfortable as he was, Hux felt immensely grateful.  
"That's not good."  
"I was somewhat shaken." Hux muttered, trying to be convincing, but failing a bit. Kylo helped him out by putting the feeling of broken heating into his head momentarily, and it helped him a lot. _Sorry, Hux._ Hux pursed his lips, acknowledging the apology.  
"Are you alright now?" Hux looked over at Kylo, and noticed immediately the quickly-vanishing look of fondness in his eyes. Hux felt a twinge of guilt when he saw this look, but smiled nonetheless.  
"Thanks to him." Kylo smiled back, trying not to show his heartbreak.  
"That's good to hear." The inspector added. Kylo took their plates and went to go wash them up, excusing himself. Hux watched Kylo, and notice the slump in his shoulders and his sadness. Hux also saw that the inspector had noticed, which meant he had to do something. Hux got up, and hugged Kylo from behind. Kylo sighed again, but made sure that he appeared relaxed. Hux stood up on his tiptoes to whisper in Kylo's ear.  
"I'm sorry this is all happening this way." Kylo turned so that he was facing Hux.  
"I forgot to tell you something." They were very close to each other, and this was making Hux extremely uncomfortable, especially because he knew what the other felt. The inspector couldn't hear them because it required very little volume for them to talk to each other.  
"What?"  
"I woke up and we were cuddling."  
"You're joking."  
"Nope. You were fast asleep, and for once in your life you looked happy. Sorry." He shrugged with a smirk, and went to sit back down across from the inspector. Hux followed, walked a little more slowly than normal.

After the inspection, Hux made himself a cup of tea, and out a shot of whiskey into it, emptying the bottle that they'd got after the last inspection as part of a monthly ration.  
"Hux, please say that's not a habit."  
"Why do you care?" Kylo didn't answer this, and Hux realised how stupid this question was: of course Kylo cared.  
"I've asked for a training dummy for combat practice." Kylo attempted to make conversation with this, but knew it wasn't going to work and so gave up. He sighed, and left. Hux watched him go, noticing how his broad shoulders slumped in defeat. A twinge of guilt hit Hux, and he sipped his tea to make it go away. That was just how it had been recently, and there was nothing that Hux could do that would change the way he felt (or didn't feel) about Kylo, and they would both just have to deal with it like mature adults, although Hux didn't really know to what capacity Kylo was capable of this. Kylo was stubborn and motivated and manipulative when he wanted to be, and Hux had a feeling that a matter so close to his heart would be one of the things he would persist with.  
And as Hux walked past Kylo's room, he swore he could hear Kylo crying.


	11. After Inspection Sixteen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just want to say thank you to all of you!! You've all been so supportive! <3

The whole entire process was really wearing down the both of them. Kylo was glad that he could at least pretend for one hour a month that Hux cared, but he knew that it was all fake. Both of them knew that this wasn't the way to go ahead: it would be the end of the both of them. The next two inspections passed with the both of them hating the situation. Hux felt a little guilty, and Kylo was being torn apart from the inside out, piece by piece, because it all felt like a cruel joke to him, that Hux could pretend he cared for an hour and then reveal how he really felt almost instantly afterwards.  
That change was the worst part, especially because Kylo was always there when it happened. He and Hux would be sitting or standing, shoulders touching, Kylo's arm around Hux, and then as soon as the door closed, Hux would get up and walk off without another word, either to make tea or to go to his room immediately. Kylo would be left where he was with a vacuum all around him. It really, really was the worst.  
After this most recent inspection, Kylo was on the verge of a breakdown. He wanted to release his anger. He used the Force to bring his lightsaber to him and got up, walking over to the training dummy. He turned it on, and started putting all of his force into hitting the dummy with the saber. He did it again and again and again but the feeling of complete hopelessness that had transferred into aggression wouldn't go away. He kept hitting it and hitting it and hitting it until his arms hurt but it didn't go away. He put his lightsaber away, throwing it on the floor, and sinking down onto his knees. He lay down on his back with a sigh, and stared up at the ceiling.  
He didn't realise that Hux had been watching him this whole entire time.  
"Kylo?" A head appeared in his field of vision. Kylo glared up at Hux.  
"Leave me alone."  
"No."  
"I said _leave me alone_!" He shouted. Hux was genuinely afraid, and walked away quietly with his tea. Kylo sat up and watched Hux walk away. Hux stopped at his door, and turned around. They made eye contact, and Hux shook his head in disapproval, turning back around and leaving. Kylo laid back down again, and let a single tear roll down his face, then another, then another, until the ceiling was just an abstract shape, constantly moving, until Kylo wasn't in a physical place anymore.  
Hux came back out again to eat dinner.  
Kylo was still there.  
Hux sighed, and made some food, bringing it to his room.  
When night came, Hux found him still there. When he came closer, Hux noticed that Kylo had his eyes closed, and was breathing slowly. Having spent nights with him, Hux knew that Kylo had fallen asleep. Hux sighed, turned around, and just at that moment, the heating broke. Hux couldn't move. He was paralysed with fear. He didn't need the heating to break. Not now. Clumsily, his motions constricted with terror, he checked all of the fittings on the windows, and then the thermostat. Nothing had happened apart from the heating breaking, thank goodness. Hux was still a little panicky, however. He walked over to the kitchen area, but didn't quite make it, because he'd tripped over Kylo, hitting the floor quite hard.  
"Are you alright?" Kylo asked. Hux sat up, looking a little dazed.  
"I think so."  
"It's cold in here." Kylo looked alarmed, and got up to check the fittings.  
"Don't bother. I just did it. There's nothing wrong apart from the heating."  
"They really need to fix it." Kylo replied. "Do you want a blanket?"  
"Yes please." Kylo found him a blanket, and put it around Hux's shoulders, which Hux accepted graciously.  
"Thanks." Hux got up again.  
"We need to talk."  
"I know."  
"Why not now?"  
"You know perfectly well that neither of us want to talk about it, so why should we?"  
"Because we need to."  
"Fine." Hux poured himself a full glass of whiskey.  
"You need to stop drinking whenever you have a problem."  
"It helps."  
"It's still a problem."  
"You're not the only one who has to deal with this, Kylo." This hurt him a little, but he didn't show it.  
"We need to talk." He repeated.  
"I know. It's not working."  
"It hurts." Kylo's voice was breaking as he said it.  
"How much?"  
"I can't deal with this system. It's not working and it hurts and I hate it."  
"It's bad, isn't it?"  
"Yeah."  
"I'm sorry." Hux's guilt came through again.  
"It's not your fault."  
"It's not yours either."  
"I fell in love. I'm sorry."  
"You can't control it."  
"I wish I could."  
"I know it's not that simple."  
"I know." Kylo snapped back. "I know and I want you to understand something."  
"What?"  
"You haven't had human contact for a long time. Not properly, at least. How do you know that whatever-" He indicated with his hands. "This- is couldn't be something?"  
"Kylo-"  
"Please, how do you not know?" He sounded desperate. Hux didn't even seem to care. He just looked at Kylo. Kylo held a hand up in front of himself.  
"What are you doing?"  
"Human contact."  
"What do you mean?"  
"You haven't properly experienced human contact maybe ever."  
"I'm not going to kiss you, if that's what you want."  
"I'm not going to pressure you into that, although I could if I wanted to. And then I could erase your memory afterwards."  
"You wouldn't dare."  
"I wouldn't. Of course I wouldn't. I care about you too much for that."  
"Of course you do. So what do you want me to do."  
"Hand." He offered his hand to Hux, who stared at it.  
"Congratulations, Ren, you have knowledge of basic anatomy." Kylo knew Hux knew what he meant.  
"Hux-"  
"What?" Hux was obviously putting it off.  
"Is it an idea that's so repulsive to you?"  
"Yes! From the outset, you have known that I have disliked you. We both disliked each other."  
"And look how that turned out." Kylo kept his hand held out, and Hux looked at it, nothing more.  
"I'm sorry." His voice was gentler now. Kylo was watching him, the intricate and artificial composure behind his eyes breaking more and more. His eyes were glittering in the light, and Hux noticed this when they made eye contact. This glittering filled his eyes to the brim, threatening to spill over. "I'll do it."  
"Thank you." Kylo held up his hand in front of Hux, and Hux held it, lacing his fingers with Kylo's. Hux stared at his hand, then straight into Kylo's eyes. There was an expression that Kylo couldn't quite read in it.  
Hux tore his hand away.  
He left without another word.  
Kylo was left on the floor, with Hux's whiskey glass, completely untouched. Kylo downed it almost in one, and the glittering brimmed and spilled over, leaving him shipwrecked on the floor.


	12. After Inspection Seventeen

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for all the support so far (1000+ hits whaaat?)! I know it's taken a while to get this out, but I really wanted to get this perfect instead of just churning out chapters like previously. I am also aware that this chapter is remarkably short, but it doesn't need to be long.

It had become worse. This whole situation had, if you could quantify emotions so huge as those that Kylo was experiencing, doubled, if not tripled, in its gravity. Kylo had lost Hux. He'd lost him. Everything he'd been hoping for, the very man he'd fallen in love with, had fallen away, had, in every sense of the phrase, slipped through his fingers.  
During the inspection, Hux didn't appear, and the inspector began to get a little suspicious. Kylo managed to cover for him, saying that he was sick and not to be disturbed whilst he was sleeping, all whilst the broken pieces of his heart were being shattered and shredded even more. He had to smile fondly in response to questions about Hux, even though the last time he saw him was his tearing away from Kylo.  
After the inspection, Kylo spent many lonely hours staring out at the vast expanse of empty space, despairing at the fact that, out of all the people in all the places in all the situations, he had to be himself, here, now, stuck on a spaceship with someone who didn't love him back. Sometimes, this despair turned to violence, and he would smash at the training dummy with his lightsaber, his bare hands, anything. He would punch it until his knuckles bled and he couldn't feel and he was too worn out to go to his room to sleep. He would just collapse onto the cold floor where he was, with the stars watching him pitifully as he fell further into his isolation and misery.  
It was only when the sounds of violent lashing out ceased that Hux would emerge, knowing that Kylo would have exhausted himself. It was only then that he felt comfortable to stock up on food for the next day, and he could watch, completely unobserved, Kylo's face. It was the only time that it wasn't dangerous for either of them to go near the other, and Kylo's face carried a kind of serenity when he was asleep that made Hux feel serene himself.  
This system worked for a long time before and after the inspection, right up until a few days after the seventeenth inspection.  
The heating just had to break.  
Hux wanted to resist checking the fittings.  
He really did.  
He just couldn't resist. The fear that was usually so subdued in him suddenly became unusually predominant when this happened, and he had to check the fittings. He emerged, paler than usual (if that was possible), and froze when he saw Kylo. Kylo was checking one of the fittings, but his hand dropped when Hux appeared, and they stood, not moving, not blinking, frozen, just staring at each other. Hux cleared his throat, and went to check the fittings. Kylo did the other half of the fittings, even though he knew it was absurd to do this every time the heating died. There was, of course, no fault, and they were now in a room together.  
They couldn't bear it.  
Hux left without even a glance at Kylo, and Kylo was left staring at the closed door. He sighed, and went to go make himself breakfast in the cold. Knowing that Hux was in his room and freezing cold, Kylo made some food for him as well. He brought the plate over to the door and knocked on it. There was no reply.  
"Hux?" This was the first time that Hux had heard Kylo's voice for the longest time, and he lost the ability to reply, and the silence upset Kylo significantly. "Hux?" He tried once more. "I have food. It's hot." The door opened, and a messy-haired Hux stood in front of him. The rings under his eyes were more pronounced than usual, and his face was white, making his hair even more like fire. Hux stood for a moment, looking up into Kylo's eyes.  
"Thank you." Hux eventually replied, taking the plate and vanishing again. Kylo was left with the memory of his blue eyes, the eyes that entranced him so much. He went the rest of the day thinking about this, and in the evening he brought Hux dinner. He knocked on the door, and Hux opened it immediately, and the first thing that Kylo noticed was that those enchanting blue eyes were rimmed with red.  
"Are you alright?" Kylo asked, handing him the plate. Hux pursed his lips.  
"I'm fine. Leave me alone." Hux snapped back, not even looking at him. Hux tried to shut the door but Kylo got his foot in to prevent it from closing properly. Hux opened it again. "What is it, Ren?"  
"We can't keep doing this."  
"I'm not weak. I can."  
"As much as you'd like that, Hux, you're human."  
"Wha- what do you mean by that?" Kylo was confused at Hux being startled, but didn't let it sway his speech.  
"We're both going to finish ourselves off if something doesn't change." Hux shut the door almost immediately after Kylo finished his sentence. Kylo leaned on the door. "Hux, you know I'm right."  
"Leave me alone." Came the muffled reply. Kylo sighed, with tears gradually beginning to flood his field of vision, a feeling he'd known all too well recently.  
Kylo didn't see him for another week.  
When he did see him, Kylo was making breakfast. Eggs. As usual. He was in his pyjamas, after spending a proper night in his own bed, however miserable he still was. He had his hair scraped back into a messy bun, and Hux emerged as he scraped his breakfast onto a plate.  
"Kylo." Hux greeted, and looked across the room at him.  
"Are you alright?" Kylo asked. Hux was looking worse than normal.  
"I'm-" He paused, debating whether or not to burden Kylo with his problems. "I'm alright." He looked away with a sigh. Kylo moved around the counter, and eradicated the chasm of space between them. Hux looked up into Kylo's eyes, and Kylo saw some odd expression pass briefly over his face.  
"What's wrong?"  
"Nothing."  
"Hux-"  
"I'm fine. There's nothing- that you- can do."  
"Hux, I'm sure I can help."  
"I guess you could." Hux smiled so, so briefly, just as he exhaled. Kylo felt as if he'd been stunned with a blaster when he registered this. It had been so long since he had seen him smile.  
"What?"  
"I'm fine." The coldness returned, and Kylo was left even more stunned- how could Hux so quickly change his emotions like that?  
"Sure." Kylo looked away from Hux, thinking about returning to his breakfast instead of putting himself through more torture.  
"Kylo-"  
"Yes?"  
"You- you missed a bit of hair." There was a tiny tiny lock of hair loose from his bun, right at the front.  
"Right. Yeah." Kylo brushed it back.  
"You missed."  
"I-" He tried again.  
"Here." Hux reached up to brush the hair back.  
And then, suddenly, they were kissing.  
Neither knew how it happened really, who initiated it, how one action translated into another so quickly, but they were kissing and they were kissing and kissing and kissing and it was together and it was perfect.  
In hindsight, both knew that it would happen some day. God knows when, they thought, both pining after one another for so long, Kylo in public, his counterpart in painful privacy, unable to cope with the positive emotions that he himself had never experienced before.  
But they were kissing.  
In this moment, nothing else mattered.  
It was happening.  
Eventually, when they pulled apart only enough to look each other in the face, the reality of the situation dawned on them.  
"Well," Kylo said. "I thought you hated me."  
"Why do you think I hid in my room for so long?"  
"But you knew I loved you."  
"I-" Kylo could sense that Hux had been, and still was terrified of this new feeling. He pulled Hux into his arms, and held him until he felt him relax.  
"It's ok. It's ok." Kylo whispered. Hux nuzzled into his shoulder, and Kylo wrapped his arms further around him.  
"How aren't you angry at me?" Hux asked. Kylo moved back so he could look him in the eye, confused.  
"Why would I be angry at you?"  
"I let you go for months and months on end, thinking I didn't love you back. At first, I didn't, but then something just-"  
"Clicked." Kylo nodded, knowing exactly what he was talking about.  
"And then, when you made me hold your hand, I knew what I was feeling but I didn't know how to deal with it and I'm so sorry it turned out that way and-" Kylo cut Hux off with another kiss. This one was more tentative than before, because before there was no fear, because there was no thought. Now, Kylo was fully aware of what he was doing.  
And it was terrifying.  
But then again, it wasn't.  
It was and it wasn't and it was and it wasn't and somehow this feeling didn't stop him from kissing Hux, and that selfsame feeling in Hux somehow didn't stop him from kissing back.  
Everything that had built up between them, all the pain, all the heartbreak, suddenly vanished, never to be seen again.  
This was everything they needed. To one, the other was everything.


	13. Inspection Twenty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry it took so long for this to come out!! I've been super busy/ to the point that I haven't had time to finish my normal work, let alone this (sorry)... also the chapter didn't save when I wrote it, and then my laptop decided to break (I've had a very eventful few weeks since I've updated, and I'm so so sorry it's been so long).

The inspector hadn't come for the next two inspections, because of trial dates and things, so the two of them had a lot of time to themselves with each other, which was nice. It also meant that the inspector didn't have the opportunity to witness the fundamental change in the dynamic, which was indeed observable, mainly because you can't fake real love.  
When the inspector came for the inspection, it was painfully obvious to her that the dynamic had indeed changed between them.  
This wasn't helped, of course, by the fact that when she entered, she found Hux parked up on the kitchen counter, with his legs wrapped around Kylo's waist, making out.

She stared awkwardly at the ground for a moment, not completely sure what to do, but then opened the door and closed it again. This time they heard the door close, and broke apart rather suddenly, both of them going red. Hux tried to tame his messy hair, but it was beyond saving at this point. They both stared at the inspector with alarm.  
"Apologies for the interruption." She smirked at them.  
"Sorry you had to see that." Hux muttered, ashamed for letting someone see him be unprofessional.  
"It's alright, you're married." She commented. Hux smiled, as did Kylo: they'd never talked about that, but it being said brought joy to both of them.  
"Can I get you a drink?" Hux asked.  
"Do you have anything strong? I've had a particularly tough day."  
"Scotch?"  
"Sounds fantastic."  
"Neat?"  
"Even better." Hux made her the drink, and then sat down with the other two. "Right, today, I've been assigned to talk to you about fears."  
"How come?" The inspector looked uneasy.  
"I'm not entirely sure. Maybe it won't be relevant for another few months or something. I don't know." She sipped her drink. "First things first: what do you both most fear?"  
"Isolation." Kylo answered.  
"How come?"  
"I thought I knew it when I let it become the ruin of me, but then I caused it more myself, and the feeling of being important to nobody and stuck in the infinity of space is the worst feeling I have ever experienced and I don't want it to happen again."  
"I see." Kylo flinched a little, because he could hear the tinge of fear in the inspector's voice.  
"And you, Hux?"  
"Being separated from Kylo."  
"I see. And why is that?"  
"He is the first constant I've had in my life for a very long time." The inspector wrote this all down, taking a sip of her drink.  
"Right. Both of you, do you have any fears resulting from previous experience in specifically family life?" She looked up, and saw Hux's face. He was white as a sheet, completely paralysed by his thoughts. "Are you alright?" She asked. Hux didn't seem to hear her.  
"Do you need a moment?" Kylo asked gently and quietly. Hux's lips parted almost imperceptibly. Kylo nodded at the inspector, confirming what he'd just asked, and then led Hux gently out of the room and into their bedroom. The inspector downed the rest of her drink and waited.

When they returned, Hux was looked more settled now. He poured himself another drink, downing it.  
"Sorry about that." The inspector looked Hux in the eye, and Hux tried to smile back.  
"It's alright."  
"Is it alright if I continue with the questions?"  
"It's fine."  
"If you were to be tortured, what type of torture would you be most afraid of?" Kylo answered first, sensing that Hux was retreating into himself again. Kylo used the Force, not particularly for a specific purpose, but to provide energy to surround Hux, in a way comforting him.  
"Being kept in a dark room, alone, without the opportunity to sleep."  
"And why is that?"  
"Because you can beat me all you like and I won't care, but psychological torment is something I fear, as I've said." Kylo sensed a change in the Force around Hux, so he went into Hux's head.  
_So, you wouldn't mind a bit of beating?  
Don't be dirty, Hux.  
Is it on the agenda though?  
Of course. _ Kylo felt Hux smile as he entangled their fingers.  
The inspector stared at her paper, not really knowing what to say. The questions were fairly self-evident, and since it had been almost two years with them, she could answer them herself, without even having to ask them. Knowing that there was nothing really that had to be asked here and now, she laid the questions down on the sofa. The pair opposite her looked over to her, with similar expressions of confusion.  
"I don't need these." She told them. "I know you two. I've been here so many times that I know you both better than these questions presuppose."  
"We could fill them in for you now."  
"I can answer them. The questions are stupid."  
"What do we do now?"  
"I'm not supposed to tell you two this, and I'd get fired if I told you this but I have to tell you this."  
"Tell us what?" The inspector looked around. Kylo used the Force to temporarily disconnect everything except the oxygen.  
"Your time is short. You don't have much more time left here. The Court will reach its verdict soon."  
"What does that mean?"  
"Life or death. Soon. They've nearly decided."  
"Do you know what the likely outcome is?"  
"No. That's all I know." Kylo turned everything back on, and held Hux's hand a little tighter.  
"It's all horribly timed," Hux muttered. "If things were to have happened in a different order, then maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe Kylo and I would be living on some distant planet like Naboo, happily not doing anything."  
"Not Naboo." Kylo laughed a little.  
"Why not Naboo?"  
"I can't stand the Gungans."  
"Who can stand Gungans?" Kylo laughed quietly, uneasily. Their time was short.  
"I wish it had played out like that. Sadly, nothing goes that way. We became the bad guys. And now it's too late." Hux leaned into Kylo, a small lump building in his throat. Kylo moved his hand from around Hux's, and wrapped an arm around him instead. He sighed sadly. Their time was short.  
"You two make such a lovely pair." The inspector commented.  
"It's a truly odd thing." Hux laughed a little.  
"Odd?"  
"We used to despise each other. On the Finalizer, we were at each others throats on a daily basis."  
"Until I told you I was in love with you." Kylo added.  
"Yes, well, I still couldn't stand the sight of you."  
"But only because you were desperately in love with me and didn't know how to cope with it."  
"That is true." Hux laughed.  
"Did you two really hate each other?"  
"Well, I think we thought we did, because we were thought we were in competition with one another to be the best," Hux smiled. "But I think we were just trying to impress one another and completely denying that that was the ulterior motive."  
"Well, I'm glad you found each other." Hux smiled sadly. Their time was short.  
"I'm glad as well." Kylo replied.  
The three of them talked for quite a while, until the inspector checked the time.  
"Goodness me! Is that the time? I need to go."  
"Well, it was nice to see you too." Kylo smiled. Hux nodded in agreement. When then inspector left, Kylo turned to face Hux, and was a little surprised when he completely buried himself in Kylo's arms. "What's wrong?" Hux's shoulder's started shaking, and Kylo held him tighter. "What's wrong? What's wrong?" Hux came up for air, his eyes red, tears falling. Kylo wiped them away with the pad of his thumb.  
"This might be it. This might be all the time that we have. The only experience of love, because I love you, Kylo. I love you more than my heart can take, and I don't want this to be the end. I don't want to lose you. I don't want any of this. I want to be out in the galaxy, with you. We'll never have that. Either we have too little time left alive, or far too much time in our futures separated from one another." Kylo pulled Hux into him again, stroking the back of his head with his fingers.  
"If this is it, then we've got to make the most of it. It's the worst thing to happen to anyone, I'm not even going to try and deny that, but this means that we have to make the most of it. It's not like we have anything else to do with our lives. And Hux?"  
"Yes?" Hux was muffled in Kylo's chest.  
"I love you so, so much." Hux sat up again, looking towards him, managing a smile.  
"Why am I being like this? You're usually the mopey one."  
"And you're usually the voice of logic and reason, but I guess we've spent too much time around each other."  
"Don't say that. There's never too much time. We're running out of it."  
"Hey, at least we got married." Hux laughed. Kylo placed one of his hands on Hux's cheek, gradually bringing him into a kiss. Hux placed one hand on either side of Kylo's face, and Kylo put his spare hand dangerously low on Hux's back, slipping his fingers up to make contact with bare skin. Hux responded by sliding his hands down Kylo's sides, and tugging up that frustratingly clingy dark grey shirt. Suddenly, a feeling Hux had never experienced hit him. It was purer than any sensation of pleasure he'd ever felt before, and he gasped and fell against Kylo, completely breathless.  
"I've always wanted to try that."  
"What _was_ that?"  
"That's for me to know, and you to find out. I'm just glad it works. How do you feel now?" Hux smirked at this, and kissed Kylo more passionately than ever.  
Kylo smiled into the kiss, sighing a little. A sad, strange, sigh.  
Their time was short.


	14. Inspection Twenty Two

By this point, this whole stupid arrangement had become a waiting game. The Galactic Court had reached a verdict, but of course they weren't going to tell Kylo and Hux. The Court may have been sided with the good, but in no way did that mean they were completely good themselves. The reasoning behind it, which, again, Hux and Kylo were not told, was because there was a fear that if the outcome was not what they desired, they'd make attempts to escape, which took up unnecessary amounts of time and money for the Courts. Kylo and Hux were just stuck, staring out hopelessly at the stars as their fate was decided and made known galaxy-wide by a group out of their control.  
The inspector, at least, had become a kind of comfort to the two of them. She was the only contact they had with the outside world, and she was allowed to be especially nice to them, now that their time was coming to a close, although they didn't know when. The one thing that she could not do, however, was give them the information about their futures that they most desired, which led to an underlying tension that nobody yet knew was there.  
For the moment, however, Kylo and Hux were discussing their second anniversary plans with the inspector.  
"Surely you couldn't just slip in a favour?" Kylo was leaning forward slightly, locking eyes hopefully with the inspector.  
"I'm really sorry." She looked sadly at them.  
"Not even closer to the time?" The inspector looked at the floor. Kylo didn't see this, but Hux did, and immediately his heart dropped to the floor.  
"We're not going to reach it, are we?" He asked. The inspector paused.  
"It's not likely." She replied, not looking at either of them.  
"Not likely or impossible?"  
"Not likely."  
"We're not going to die, are we?" Hux asked. He sounded like a small child, and it broke the inspector's heart to see this normally so put-together grown man to speak in this way.  
"I can't tell you." She replied, giving away nothing. Kylo considered going into the inspector's head, but eventually thought better of it, not really wanting to find out his fate. Instead, he just held on to Hux's hand: they were frightened of what was to come.  
"Do you mean reach it as in be alive for it, or be in this room for it?"  
"I mean it isn't likely that you'll be in this room for it, not that you'll be alive for it. I can't tell you that. They'd kill me. I've already told you too much."  
"Don't worry," Kylo interrupted. "I took out the recording capacity when this conversation reached a point where I realised someone was going to get hurt by it. I'll reconnect it now. What should we talk about?"  
"I don't know." She replied.  
"We need something to talk about."  
"Dream anniversary?" Hux suggested.  
"Fine." Kylo replied begrudgingly. Hux felt the Force relax, although he didn't realise when it came around in the first place.  
"But the thing is," Hux pretended he was mid-sentence. "It's not the big gestures that have the most impact, it's the small ones."  
"I didn't realise you had experience of anniversaries before this. I didn't think you were the relationship type."  
"I wasn't really. I had a couple of things with some people, but they didn't last long."  
"On the Finalizer?"  
"Of course." Kylo's eyebrows basically hit the ceiling.  
"Who?"  
"Ooh, you sound too desperate to know." He teased. "I'll tell you later." He winked. Kylo made a disgruntled nice, a bit like a four-year-old who hasn't had their way with things.  
But now the inspector was intrigued.  
"Go on, who?"  
"I couldn't possibly." Hux was grinning, but going gradually more red.  
"Aww, come on honey." Kylo was grinning too.  
"Well, it was on a more permanent basis than your dalliances with bored stormtroopers..." The inspector nearly choked with surprise.  
"You didn't need to bring that up!" Kylo gave him a friendly nudge in the ribs.  
"I felt like I needed to embarrass you before I told you."  
"You're the worst." Kylo replied, kissing Hux lightly.  
"I know." He smiled back.  
"So, tell me." Hux laughed a little, and then leaned towards Kylo and whispered in his ear. The inspector watched as it took a moment for shock to register on Kylo's face, as Hux leaned back, going even redder.  
"Seriously?!" Hux nodded quietly.  
"Oh, now that's not fair." The inspector commented. "You can't leave me not knowing." Kylo was still in shock, but he turned slowly to the inspector.  
"Dopheld Mitaka." He said: nothing more. The inspector's jaw dropped.  
"I don't believe it. Really?"  
"Yes." Hux mumbled, now a deep shade of scarlet. "But I don't see why this is a big deal to any of you."  
"It is, because firstly, I didn't think you to be the relationship type, and secondly, him?" Kylo looked at him with a raised brow.  
"Why, are you jealous?" Kylo's face changed, and he leaned in to whisper into Hux's ear.  
"Is he safe?"  
"What?"  
"You just name-dropped someone close to you. If they find him-"  
"As far as the universe is concerned, he died." Hux whispered back. "Also, why didn't you just ask me in my head?"  
"Tired. Concerned."  
"Jealous?"  
"A little." Hux kissed his forehead, and then leaned back again.  
"Everything alright?"  
"Indeed." Hux smiled, looking at Kylo. "He's just jealous."  
"Only a little." Kylo nudged Hux's foot with his own. "Only a little, because we're married now." Hux leaned into him, but felt his heart rate rise a little, and he felt Kylo's do the same: they were frightened of what was to come.

Once the inspector had left, Hux got up, only to be grabbed by the waist and dragged back down. He lost his balance and fell into Kylo's lap, looking up at him. He smirked up at him, and Kylo entwined his fingers in Hux's hair.  
"When did you guys break up?" He was still thinking about it, and obviously still jealous. "I never saw you two as particularly friendly with one another."  
"Well, besides the fact that it was a professional environment so we couldn't be too friendly, but also we broke up the day you were assigned to the Finalizer."  
"Seriously?"  
"The crew there did exist before you, you know."  
"No, I'm concerned about the timing of it all. The fact that you broke up the day I arrived."  
"Oh, that was nothing-"  
"Wasn't it?"  
"Well, it was a little bit something, but-"  
"What was it?"  
"You intimidated the both of us to the point that we thought that if you found out, all hell would break loose."  
"Sorry."  
"It's alright. Anyway, if you hadn't put the fear of the universe into me, we wouldn't be married." Kylo leaned down and kissed Hux.  
"True." He paused. "I can't believe I scared you. I thought you were unshakeable."  
"To the outside world, I was. I bottled all of the emotion up, but now..."  
"Now?" Hux replied by sitting up and kissing him properly. Kylo placed his hands on Hux's back and pulled him closer. Hux sighed contentedly, still vaguely aware of everything. They were frightened of what was to come.


	15. After Inspection Twenty-Three

The underlying anxiety had been with the pair of them for so long that it had begun to fade away into irrelevant background noise by now.  
By now, it was the night before their second anniversary, and they hadn't heard anything about a date of imprisonment (or execution), so the signs seemed pretty good for a pretty normal day tomorrow. The day after that? Who knew. Who cared? That was just another day, and it was the anniversary that was the more important day.  
At least, that was what they had told themselves. Get through this anniversary, and it's fine. Truthfully, they knew that this wasn't the case: no day would be the right day to be separated on a permanent basis.  
But now, they were sitting on the sofa, with cups of tea cradled in their hands. Kylo was staring out at the vast expanse of space, as he often did when he was feeling meditative. Hux noticed this, and quietly placed a hand on Kylo's shoulder in order to bring him slowly back into reality.  
"Sorry, Hux."  
"It's alright." He paused. "What's on your mind?"  
"Of all of the places I wound up, my last just had to be here. In the best way. I'm here, obviously here isn't the best of places, but I'm here with you. And I didn't think that was going to be the best thing that happened to me."  
"Kylo-"  
"Yes?"  
"What do you mean that it's your last place?"  
"Face it, Hux."  
"Face what?"  
"This is the last place we're ever going to really see."  
"Kylo," Hux's voice cracked. "Kylo, we're not going to die."  
"Face it."  
"We're not."  
"Hux-"  
"Kylo-" Hux's voice kept breaking and cracking, and he started sobbing. Kylo sighed, and then looked over to him. He took Hux's face in his hands, using the back of his index finger to brush away the tears.  
"I'm sorry."  
"Why don't you have hope?" He whispered.  
"You may think that the Galactic Court will be merciful, because everyone sees them as the good guys, but everyone sees us as the bad guys. Do you really think that they'll show any kind of mercy towards us?"  
"Kylo, your own mother is spearheading the 'good guys', she'll show mercy."  
"Really?"  
"She's your mother-"  
"If your father was opposed to you, would he show mercy?"  
"No, but Kylo, this is a different matter. Your mother has some kind of humanity."  
"I killed her husband. My own father."  
"You thought it was your only option."  
"Well, now we only do have one option."  
"No. I refuse." Hux looked at him defiantly. "Have some hope. And anyway, tomorrow's our anniversary." He finished his tea.  
"Tomorrow." Kylo repeated.  
"Yes, and tomorrow," Hux leaned in close, his voice dripping with teasing. "We're going to have a fantastic day, get absolutely smashed, and then have mind-blowing sex."  
"Oh, really?"  
"Yes, really. And do you know why?"  
"Why?"  
"Because we can, and so we will." Hux smiled cheekily, and then kissed Kylo's forehead.  
"We will." Kylo repeated quietly.  
"It'll be alright, alright?" Hux clasped both of Kylo's hands, even though Kylo's hands were much bigger than his.  
"I wish."

The pair of them had fallen asleep on the sofa, with Hux lying gently on Kylo's chest. Kylo's arm was around Hux, and he could feel his heartbeat gently. Right now, Hux was fast asleep, and Kylo was in a state of dozing that was neither awake nor asleep. It was, in essence, bliss.  
Because of this, the guard who came to fetch them nearly hesitated when he grabbed Hux, tugging him to his feet. Hux's hands were held to his back, and cuffed, and his head was held forwards. Kylo, who had felt Hux slip away, opened his eyes slowly, assuming Hux was getting up to make coffee or something. When he registered what was happening, it was too late: he was grabbed as well, and, even though he attempted to use the Force, and then brute force, to get out, it was no use. The handcuffs had dampened his ability to use the Force, and they were too strong for even him. His head was held as well, and he couldn't even see Hux. He yelled and yelled until they clamped something over his mouth, and held him upright when his knees gave way. He felt himself being dragged out of the room, hoping desperately that Hux was behind him, or somewhere, and that this wasn't the last opportunity for contact with him for the rest of his life, and hoping that this moment was not leading to the end of his life.  
And then-  
Darkness.


	16. [Date unknown]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Christmas! I'm very sorry about this chapter...  
> I'm also sorry it's short, but I feel I couldn't make it longer without diluting the emotions.

Kylo could feel.  
He was hurting all over. Every single fibre and muscle and nerve was screaming in agony.  
But he was alive.  
He breathed in, and, unsure if the cries of agony were him or in his head, he tried to sit up. He made it halfway, but collapsed back down.  
Less ambitiously, he tried opening his eyes. When he did, it was all so bright white that he had to shut them again. He tried again, opening his eyes bit by bit, letting his pupils fully adjust. The room he was in was a high-security prison cell, all white walls and white light, with a near-invincible glass wall so the guards could see everything he did. He was slumped clumsily on a bed in the corner, on the far side of the room from the glass. He spluttered and lifted his head up, and a bored looking guard came over to the glass, leaning against it with a smirk. The expression was more than patronising, and Kylo knew the guard was doing it to antagonise him. Furthermore, Kylo knew that it was working, because, despite the pain, he heaved himself up, staggered over to the glass, leaned against it heavily, and stared down the guard.  
"What is it, Ren?" The guard asked, his upper lip curling.  
"Where is he?"  
"Who?"  
"Hux."  
"Who?"  
"My husband. _Where is my husband?!_ "  
"That's classified."  
"NO! WHERE IS HE?"  
"I can't tell you. And Ren, you may want to calm down or we will have to tranquilise you, and you already know that that hurts." Kylo knew. He couldn't source where any of his pain was coming from. He hurt all over, physically, and emotionally. He wanted to kill the man in front of him. He tried to use the Force to throttle him, but the man just laughed.  
"Wha-?"  
"Check your wrists, idiot." Kylo did. There were dampening cuffs on his wrists, cutting into him. "You see them? Well, the material it's made from is infused everywhere. In the walls, in the glass here, even in the clothes you're wearing." He looked down at his black prison uniform, feeling complete isolation, as the guard scoffed and left, walking along the corridor, out of sight. Kylo collapsed against the glass, tears streaming down his face, hurting more.  
He was alive, but he wished he were dead.


	17. [Date Unknown]

Kylo could feel his mental state degrading with every passing day. Not that he knew when day and night were on this ship. The lights were left on at all times, and there was no sign of when the day began and ended. The meals that Kylo was given (he'd counted) were spread out at even intervals, and the shifts changed along with them, meaning that he never knew.  
The guards were tough: most of them didn't speak, not matter how hard he pleaded, apart from that one guard who didn't stop talking, torturing Kylo in the way that he did. Kylo screamed back at him until he lost his voice, but the guard didn't stop until his shift changed.  
He could only eat a little, only enough to survive.  
All he could think of was Hux.  
The image of him the day before their second anniversary, his gentle smile, the smile that was only for him, that nobody else had known in the world, or the universe. Maybe Mitaka had known it. Kylo smiled and laughed a little to himself, still not completely believing that that had happened. His laugh choked in his throat: Hux's face was too painfully in his mind.  
Kylo passed his days trying to reach out and feel the Force, which he knew he couldn't, and shouting for Hux, who couldn't hear him.  
It was a painful existence.  
He didn't know how long had passed, but eventually he realised that his hair, though long before, had grown, and he had a full beard. He was sleeping on the floor after punching the wall until he bled and passed out, and the guards grabbed him, pulling him to his feet. He woke immediately, trying to resist, not knowing where he was going, not knowing if he was to be executed.  
"Stop, you're getting a haircut, don't worry."  
"Why should I trust you?" He sneered.  
"We're the good guys here." One of the guards replied. Kylo huffed. Had they known the effect that their treatment was having on him...  
They took him out, him walking without resistance.  
Without resistance, that is, until he saw his undoing.  
He saw Hux.  
In the cell next to his.  
He was sitting against his bed, slumped. He was awake, but he was completely out of it. He was gaunt, pale, and dishevelled in a way Kylo had never seen. It looked like he hadn't eaten or slept in weeks. He looked up, through the glass, aware of a struggle, and saw his husband on the other side of the glass, struggling with all his might against the guards. Hux saw this, making eye contact. His eyes, once bright, were a watery colour, and he moved a little to show that he saw him, but his strength had weakened him to the point that he could hardly do anything. He watched powerlessly as one of the guards gave Kylo a strong enough blow to the back of the head that he was knocked out. A shallow noise escaped his lips, but he knew that nobody could hear him.  
Kylo woke up, his hair cropped close to his skull, his beard gone. The guard that talked was standing on the other side of the glass. Kylo walked up to him, slamming his fists against the glass.  
"What happened?"  
"You fell asleep. You were dreaming quite vividly. Kept shouting something. 'Hux', I think."  
"That was a dream?"  
"Sure." Did he dream? Was it real? He'd had the haircut, but it didn't mean that they hadn't done that whilst he was asleep. The guard shrugged, and left. Kylo touched the back of his head.  
It was bruised.  
This was all real.  
Hux was on the other side of the wall, and there was no way that he could see him.  
Hux was alive.  
Barely.


	18. [Date Unknown]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies- this is not my best writing. I'm tired but I need to get this chapter out before I forget where I was going with the plot. Also it's really short, like the last few chapters, I know. But they're important. Very important.

Kylo was shouting at the guard who talked again.  
" _Tell me how long I've been here!_ " He was becoming desperate. His sense of time had been shattered by the constant light.  
"Six months or maybe more." The guard replied. Kylo shrunk into himself a little.  
"I don't believe you."  
"I'd be breaking the rules if I showed you the calendar on my datapad, but I promise you, I'm not lying." He was being frustratingly vague, however.  
"And is Hux ok?" Kylo hadn't seen him since, because the haircuts were now conducted in the cell as a result of his reaction.  
"That I can't tell you." The guard left with a smirk, as he normally did. Kylo made a sound of frustration, or was it despair? What was the extent of his hopelessness after these six months. Or was it more? The guard did hint at that. He walked over to the wall, on the other side of which his husband was slowly dying. He was spending increasing amounts of time there, knowing that, even though he couldn't fell the Force (let alone use it), but yet he sat there, staring straight at the wall, knowing where Hux would be- or rather, with a level of dread- assuming with a high certainty that Hux was still where he saw him last.  
This time, something clicked in him, and he tried as hard as he could to use the Force, even though he couldn't feel it. He'd tried it before, but the renewed sense of motivation that he'd felt made him put more effort in than usual.  
And then, he felt something.  
It was a little like radio static: he couldn't sense anything clearly, but he could feel the Force in patches. He tried harder, physically draining himself faster than he'd ever done before. He tried and tried and tried, trying to get more than white noise. He leaned against the wall as hard as he could, trying to extend his reach to Hux, if he could. The chances were slim.  
But then-  
There was some definition in the static. He felt something in the fog. He felt a weak life force. It wasn't just weak because he could hardly feel any of the Force at all, but because the person he could sense was barely alive. They were close to the point of no return, and Kylo felt his heart sink. He knew who it was. He pushed a little further, now able to get into Hux's brain. Unlike the normal rush of activity and logical thought whizzing around in his brain (which Kylo considered to be unmatched for raw intelligence), there was almost nothing. He could feel Hux register he was there, and that gave him hope. He pushed further.  
_Hux, I know you're there. Stay alive for me. I love you._ That was all that Kylo could fit in before the physical exertion caught up with him, and he passed out.  
When he woke, he noticed one of the guards looking at him strangely. This wasn't the one who talked. This guard was a particularly imposing-looking female, whose stature and ruthless appearance reminded him of Captain Phasma.  
"What?" Kylo asked.  
"We've been monitoring your behaviour. We know you know where General Hux is. We've seen you pass out from trying to reach out to him. You are aware of the Force dampeners in your system?"  
"You put them in everything, including my clothes. Now you're telling me you've put them in me?"  
"Yes. Whenever you pass out, you get injected with some more. It's for your own safety, and for ours." She stared him down.  
"But I don't want to hurt anyone. I just want to talk to Hux."  
"Unfortunately, we can't allow that. Any risk of conspiring must be eradicated, as per Galactic Law."  
"But you could put us under constant supervision."  
"I'm sorry, but it is unfortunately impossible."  
"Please." He begged, feeling tears rolling down my face. "Let me see him."  
"It's impossible right now."  
"Please. I know he's dying."  
"He do you know that?"  
"Because he's my husband, and I know him!" He shouted back, sounding weak. The guard raised an eyebrow.  
"Between you and me, most people thought you married to remove the possibility of testifying against one another." Kylo laughed, despite himself.  
"And we, what, pretended in all of those inspections?" He smiled a little more, recalling the intensity with which he formerly despised Hux.  
"Basically, yeah." Kylo smirked.  
"Well, the time may have been suspicious, but I love him with every fibre of my being." His mood suddenly changed, and his cloudy disposition returned. "And he's on the other side of this wall, dying, and there's nothing that I can do about it."  
"Again, I'm sorry." This time, it almost seemed like she meant it.  
"Is there truly nothing you can do?"  
"Well, there's a rather unconventional loophole that I forgot about until now." She laughed drily: he knew that she had been withholding the information in order to emotionally manipulate him.  
"How convenient." He spat.  
"But it involves a year or more of you two being able to see each other through glass like this," she tapped the glass in front of her. "but not being able to touch or hear each other."  
"A whole year?"  
"And, of course, because obviously there's another catch, your dosage of Force dampeners would be doubled, if not tripled." She pursed her lips. "I've said too much. I'll have a word, see if I can scrape you an interview with one of the senior officials here, if you want that. But I can't tell you any more than this." Her hard demeanour returned (Kylo didn't really notice it had gone until then), and Kylo was left to contemplate. He may be able to reach out to Hux for long enough to explain the situation. Until then, however, he was left with no indication that Hux was alright, and no way of reaching out to him: he was very dosed up on dampeners right now, to the extent that it was making his head spin a little. At least he had one consolidation:  
Hux was alive.  
But he was fading fast.  
Hopefully his message to him went through.


	19. [Date Unknown]

They had been watching him. It had been so long since they started doing it. It had been since he'd tried to reach Hux. He knew that any attempt to contact Hux would compromise the probability of him ever getting to see his husband again, so, although it pained him, he didn't make any more attempts. Instead, he just sat miserably, leaning against the wall, hoping that Hux knew how much his heart hurt every day. He lost all motivation to move from his spot: what would be the point? He could see everything in his miserable cell, and anything that went on outside. He couldn't be bothered to even get food.  
This, he realised, must be what Hux was feeling, or at least what he felt when he last saw him.  
He would do anything to see him again.  
He had sat in his spot for so long that he was beginning to feel physically weaker. That was when he decided that he wasn't going to let himself waste away. He had to stay strong for Hux.  
He managed to eat a little, and was glad he'd chosen to eat then and not after, because the sight of two doctors running in the direction of Hux's cell. Of course, there were many cells in that direction, but Kylo expected the worst. He ran up to the glass, attracting the attention of the guard. It was the female, who had hinted that he could see his husband again.  
"Is it him?" He asked, voice laced with worry. She didn't reply. "Please." He begged. The guard's composure was broken just long enough for to answer.  
"He's nearly starved himself to death." Kylo fell to his knees.  
"Can't you see," His voice broke, and he leaned against the glass. "Can't you see that it's better for us to be together? At least let me see him. You said that maybe there would be a way for me to see him, even just through glass."  
"Oh- yes- I'm trying to get that pushed through. It might be another month, but I think I can get it shorter because your husband is in such a terrible condition."  
"Thank you." He replied. She smiled a little. "But- why are you trying to help me?"  
"Well, I used to work for your guys' side, as a stormtrooper, and I got caught up in a battle with General Organa herself. She had a gun to my head and instead of shooting me she spared me. That wouldn't have happened with the First Order. That's where I realised my priorities were in the wrong place. So I defected and joined the Resistance. So, I owe your mother something, and I don't think she would want to see you like this. I know you two have been through a lot, but I still don't think she'd want to see you die in a cell owned by her side. And, I guess, it's pretty tough being a guard here, because I'm not supposed to be helping you, or really interacting with you, but I can see both you and your husband, every day, sitting against the same patch of wall, backs to each other without even knowing, wondering if you'll ever see the other again, and it really, truly breaks my heart."

•~•~•~•~•

He didn't know how long had passed, but every time he fell asleep he would wake up in the hope that he could see Hux. Every day he was disappointed.  
Except, one day, he wasn't.  
When he woke up, even through his half-lidded eyes, he could sense that something was different. When he sat up, he could see through to another cell, the mirror image of his own. It was Hux's. Kylo moved faster than he ever thought he could, especially in his partially weakened state, and ran over to the glass, where he could see into the cell. Hux was still asleep. Kylo watched his shallow breathing, tears filling his eyes because of the tidal wave of emotion that hit him in the best way. He could see the red hair that he so loved, and the narrow shoulders (more narrow than they should be now), and he felt perfectly happy, just for that brief moment until he noticed the drip feed in his right arm. Somehow, he wasn't surprised. Mostly, he was glad that he was getting some care. Partly, he felt crippling disappointment: he wanted Hux to see him. He wanted Hux to know he loved him.  
"He won't wake up for a while." A voice said. It was the guard who talked.  
"How come?"  
"They put him in a medically-induced coma so he doesn't die."  
"So he doesn't die." Kylo repeated the words quietly, slowly understanding the very very real danger that Hux was in.  
"And the glass is soundproofed." The guard practically laughed with glee as this added torture was added onto Kylo.


	20. [Date Unknown]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Thanks for being so patient with me- I know it's been a long time since I published a chapter of this- as per usual, I've been super super busy, and had other priorities. Don't get me wrong, I still have lots of high-priority tasks to accomplish, but why do that when you can write fanfiction? :P

Kylo spent what felt like weeks waiting for any sign from Hux that he was going to get better. He spent that time in vain. No matter how hard he hoped, there was really nothing he could do apart from sit and watch through the glass. He'd moved his bedclothes from his bed and onto the floor by the window so he could sleep as close to Hux as possible. He just wished that Hux could get better immediately, and he could take that stupid drip in his wrist out, and kiss him until he felt like they could conquer the world. Maybe that wasn't best phrase to use, considering the circumstances.  
So he waited, day in, day out, waiting for a sign, waiting for something.  
One day, just before he was about to go to sleep, he thought he saw Hux's hand twitch. He sat straight back up again, and watched intently.  
Nothing happened. Nothing, in the extra two hours that he sat watching, happened.  
And so, he slept, only sleeping soundly because he had exhausted himself so much so that he physically couldn't keep himself awake. When he woke, immediately, he noticed that something was different. At first, in his sleep-drenched haze, he couldn't quite tell what, even though he had been watching Hux in the same position for a long, long time. Then it clicked: the drip was missing. Hux was still lying on his back, but Kylo now noticed that his face was much more filled out and healthy than it was when the glass divider first appeared. That was encouraging. Now, it was just a case of waiting for him to wake up.  
Thankfully, it happened quickly. A matter of minutes, in fact. Somehow, despite all of the issues and the constant light, they had maintained a roughly similar sleep schedule to one another. He watched as Hux's eyes gently opened, blinking once, twice, to adjust to the new and glaring light. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed first, using the momentum from that to sit up, something he had always done as a result of the cramped living conditions he'd been trained in. Kylo banged on the glass, knowing full well that no sound would travel: he just hoped that at least the movement would attract Hux's attention, but to no avail. He was talking to someone, presumably a guard or a doctor. Maybe it was someone telling him what had happened with the living situation whilst he was out. He hoped it was that.  
The conversation lasted a long time, and Kylo was beginning to get very impatient. Every time he felt like breaking something, he looked at the outline of Hux's face, over the bridge of his nose, his jawbone, watching his mouth move, forming words he couldn't hear. He began to ponder what potential methods of communication could be, settling on something halfway between sign language and lip reading would probably be best. He was pondering on this to such an extent that he almost didn't notice that Hux had finished his conversation. Kylo resumed his watching; Hux sighed to himself, bowing his head, and then looking around the room. He noticed rather quickly that one entire wall had changed, and saw Kylo sitting on the other side. Making direct eye contact with his husband for the first time in what seemed like forever, Kylo let his emotions completely overwhelm him, and he smiled harder than ever before, letting tears fall in an almost constant stream. Hux covered his mouth, also overcome with emotion, and he got up and ran towards Kylo. Unfortunately, he'd forgotten to take into account the fact that he had been severely weakened by the state he was in, and essentially collapsed against the window. He recovered quickly, and knelt up against the glass, with his hands pressed against it. Kylo did the same, staring straight into Hux's blue, blue eyes, through all the tears that were still falling.  
He needed Hux so much, and now he almost had him back.  
"I love you." Kylo said through the glass. Hux furrowed his brows, obviously not understanding. "I- love- you." He spoke more slowly, getting his message across.  
"I know." Hux replied. Kylo laughed, rolling his eyes. In the back of his mind, this brought back three things: one, that Hux's dry sense of humour was something he'd missed, two, that there was still a painful reminder of his parents hidden in those words, and three, that Hux had gotten his message when he had tried to use the Force to get to him.  
"Are you OK?" He mouthed, slowly again. This method of conversation, along with some small hand gestures, was a painful and slow process, but the desire to communicate had completely taken over everything.  
"Better now." Hux shrugged.  
"What happened?"  
"I didn't eat. I missed you. I got your message. It was just too late."  
"Are you weak?"  
"Yes." Kylo sighed a little at this, not wanting to think of Hux as weak, because he was anything but that.  
"Bring your sheets here. If you can. We'll make a bed."  
"I'll try." Kylo hated Hux being so weak. Normally he was so confident of what he was doing. Kylo watched him walk on unsteady legs, slowly, slowly, bringing the sheets over to where Kylo was sitting. He laid them out softly next to where Kylo's were on the other side of the divide, and sat on them, looking across at Kylo.  
"Messy." He half-smiled, looking at the way Kylo's sheets were strewn about.  
"Always." Kylo paused, doing nothing but taking in the blueness of his husband's eyes. "I will help you get strong again." He smiled, and Hux smiled back.  
"Thank you."


	21. [Date Unknown]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! Sorry it's been so long! I've been running around doing all sorts of school stuff and also I've been in Italy doing other exciting things :P  
> Thanks for bearing with me!  
> It's also a bit of a short one, because I can feel a natural end to this fic coming along soon, probably in the next few chapters, as there isn't much substance to add to it anymore (sadly).

Kylo had the soundest sleep so far since he'd arrived at the prison, despite the fact that the spy who talked was watching him intently from the other side of the outer glass, rolling his communications unit around between his fingertips. Not that he noticed any of that. The first thing he felt was the cool of the inside glass reflecting onto his face. His eyes fluttered open, and met the sight of his husband, hair falling over his brow, sleeping soundly. This was a sight he was so used to, and it opened up all of the old emotions that hit him in a blunt wave and forced a smile to break over his face. Despite the fact that Hux was on the other side of the glass, this was a huge step in the right direction. Emotionally, Kylo didn't think he would have been able to cope with holding Hux in his arms after going without so much as a gland at him for this long.  
Well, that's what he told himself. He tried with all his might to hide the bitter need for physical contact, but no matter how hard he tried, it still tainted the softer feelings. Sighing, he scanned his eyes over his husband's face, his cheekbones, the angles of his jawline, those freckles that were so imperceptible that only Kylo really knew they were there, and those eyes, which were slowly opening. Hux smiled, stretching out from sleeping in a little ball.  
"Good morning." Kylo smiled. Hux took a moment to process, trying to lip read in his sleepy haze.  
"Morning." He mouthed back. Kylo placed a hand up on the glass, and Hux delicately mirrored him. _I love you so much,_  Kylo thought to himself, looking over at Hux, who startled a little. Kylo gave him a strange look, questioning. _I heard you,_ a voice in Kylo's head, with Hux's voice, replied. That voice. He didn't realise how much he'd missed it, so much so that a tear rolled down his cheek. Bolting upright, with Hux doing the same, Kylo tried again.  
_How come this is working?_  
_I don't know. Not that I'm complaining._  
 _Neither me._ Kylo looked over to the guard, who was giving them a suspicious look.  
_One second. I'll go get food so he doesn't get suspicious._ Kylo got up, and walked over to the other side of the room. He grabbed his breakfast from where it got sent into his cell.  
_Stop thinking so loud._ Kylo had the voice in his head again.  
_I don't know what's happening, or how it's happening._  
 _It's the Force._  
 _Wow, thanks for that, couldn't have figured that out on my own._  
 _Hey, Kylo, I'm supposed to be the sarcastic one in this relationship._  
 _Whatever. I think it's the Force that's doing this, almost as if it's a compensation for the not being able to talk._  
 _Why would the Force be a compensation for the inability to communicate verbally?_  
 _The Force has ways beyond any understanding. I think it's a reaction to my needs._  
 _Needs?_  
 _I need to talk to you properly, because I love you more than words can say._  
 _Oh, stop it, you._


	22. [Date Unknown]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! Don't you love it when I have time off from my crazy schedule so that I can upload two chapters in two days instead of in two months?  
> This one's a tad longer (1866 words as opposed to 500 or whatever the last chapter was), so enjoy!

For most of his life, the Force had been somewhat of a burden to Kylo and to everyone around him. As a child, it alienated him from the other children, Snoke's voice in his head had weakened him until he was no more than a puppet, and then all it did was make people scared of him, and it gave him a reason to act out. The only exception to this was Hux. His dear, dear Hux. Hux, the tactician, the headstrong, who was the only one gutsy enough to fight him, the only one who could put him in his place, the only one who truly loved him for all of his flaws. Now, all of a sudden, the Force, having been such a massive burden for so long, was something that was keeping him sane.  
When he and Hux were awake, they communicated solely by thought. The guards noticed a little, and tried to up the Force dampener dosage, but it had absolutely no effect, much to their annoyance. Kylo had absolutely no Force sensitivity otherwise, but the direct channel of communication between the two of them was all that he needed. It was all he ever needed.  
Every day, Hux would be the one to wake up first, and because he wasn't Force-sensitive, he would have no way of sensing what Kylo was thinking in his sleep, but that wasn't such an issue. He could still see him, the ridiculous tangles of thick black hair resting on his cheeks. He looked troubled when he slept, something which he hadn't seen in Kylo since they first shared a bed. He recalled that time: they had spent most of that time arguing, and getting in each other's way. He remembered when Kylo first told him that he loved him, and the alienation and fear and pain they lived in for so long before it was all sorted.  
_Stop thinking so loud._ Kylo's eyes had opened, and he was looking up at Hux through the glass.  
_Sorry. Did I wake you?_  
Kind of. But it was fine. I like waking up to the memory of our first kiss. Hux let out a dry laugh. Kylo ran his hands through his hair. He was glad he was allowed to keep it his normal length. At the start, they would shave the whole thing, and let it grow out long so that he didn't require such frequent haircuts, but now they just let it stay at the same length as it was when he arrived. They claimed it was some kind of a privilege for being so well-behaved since he arrived, but he suspected some ulterior motive. The Force dampeners wouldn't let him get any further with his investigation, either.  
_Stop thinking so loud_ Hux parroted. _At least think about something other than yourself._  
I can't help it if I have really good hair.  
Mmm, sub-par, really, in comparison to mine.  
"Dream on." Kylo said, out loud, which Hux saw.  
_Your thoughts betray you._  
_Dammit._ Despite what he said aloud, Kylo was thinking about how, even in this disgusting light, everything about Hux's hair was still perfect. It was longer than First Order regulation, and had no product in it, and fell about in ways he wished he could understand.

•~•~•~•~•

And so, time passed like this. Gentle, loving conversations, only through thought. At night, Hux would go to bed first, as before, and Kylo could feel the warm radio static of his dreams. In the morning, Hux would be awake first, and bits and pieces of his thoughts would drift into his consciousness without him having to reach out. It was nice. In the back of his mind, he still knew that going this long seeing but not being able to touch Hux was going to be the death of him. Whenever he saw the female guard who was nice to him, he would ask how long it was going to be before they were allowed to talk and to touch.  
"Well, we have to make sure that you two aren't going to kill each other or plot with each other, and we need to make sure it's all safe. But, don't fool yourselves. We know that you two are communicating with the Force. We don't know how. We've given you the highest safe dosage of Force dampeners that we can possibly give, and yet, somehow, you guys are communicating with the Force on your side."  
"The Force is responsive to the needs of the user as much as the user is responsive to it."  
"We've gathered that from our studies of the way you two have been communicating."  
"You've studied us?"  
"We've been altering variables: glass thickness, dampeners, the like, and seeing if affects your ability to communicate with one another. Obviously, we don't know what you've been communicating about, but your body language suggests that it is entirely benign so we have no reason to worry."  
"Trust me, it's been nothing bad."  
"Yes, well, the higher-ups have been having meetings about whether or not it's safer to grant you two the access to speak to one another out loud, with the glass."  
"No." Kylo shook his head.  
"No?"  
"Any further progress needs to be made in the direction of us being able to have physical contact."  
"I don't know how possible that is."  
"I don't think you understand. I love being able to talk to him all the time, albeit in our heads, but it's so hard, it's so, so hard, to wake up every morning, look into your husband's eye, and not be able to kiss him good morning, or even just to hold his hand." A lump was building in Kylo's throat, and he stopped talking. His speech seemed to have had an effect on the guard, who had pursed her lips.  
"I will- I will pass your comments forwards to the higher-ups."  
"Thank you." The sincerity in Kylo's voice stirred something properly in the guard.

•~•~•~•~•

Weeks and weeks passed, and nothing had changed. Kylo and Hux were still able to communicate, but it soon became not enough. They would spend hours on end sitting, facing each other on either side of the glass, hands placed opposite one another. The separation was really having an effect on the both of them. Kylo was starting to get self-destructively frustrated, and Hux would plead to the guards to let him do something to stop Kylo from actually killing himself.  
The guards only had to intervene one time, when Kylo had started punching the glass to the point that his hand bled. The guards sedated him before he could do any more real damage. Hux watched all of it. He could feel Kylo projecting his anger onto him, his frustration, everything he was feeling. He understood why he was doing what he was doing, but it still hurt him.  
Kylo woke up the next morning, and he couldn't sense Hux. Had they overdosed him on dampeners? Where was Hux? What was going to happen? He shifted his weight, aware of the blunt ache that the sedatives left.  
"Hux?" He groaned. He couldn't sense him. Even the radio static that Kylo could sense when Hux was asleep wasn't there. "Hux?!" He sat upright, looking through to the other cell; there was nobody there. Kylo sat up on his knees, leaning on the glass, trying to see where Hux was.  
Except there was no glass. He fell straight through. He lay for a moment in confusion, but all was resolved when he heard a muffled laugh.  
"You're awake." Kylo's heart skipped at least three beats.  
"I'm-"  
"Suddenly unable to produce coherent speech?"  
"I-" Kylo rolled over, stood up, and found himself face-to-face with Hux. The real Hux. No glass.  
"Surprise." He smiled. Kylo cut him off with the most passionate kiss he'd every given, or indeed ever received. They ended up on the floor, completely stuck in each other's arms, not letting go. Their legs got tangled, but not that they noticed. Coming up only for need of air, Hux saw that tears were streaming down Kylo's face, and indeed his own.  
"I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you." Kylo repeated over and over.  
"I love you too. So, so much." He unwound his fingers from Kylo's hair, and wiped the tears from his face, relishing in the warmth from his skin. He let his hand linger for a moment.  
"You were so panicked this morning. What was the matter?"  
"I couldn't sense you."  
"You couldn't?"  
"I guess maybe the Force works only out of necessity, and now you're here..." He trailed off, burying his face in the crook of Hux's neck. Hux brought one hand behind Kylo, stroking the back of his hair gently.  
"I'm here, you're here. This is everything that I've been craving. I nearly died for want of this-"  
"Don't remind me."  
"Sorry." Kylo held onto Hux that little bit closer, kissing his forehead.  
"Ah, young love." The guard who talked sneered over at them. Kylo sighed, feeling a little self-conscious but not letting go of Hux.  
"What do you want?"  
"Respect your superiors."  
"Sorry."  
"And as for your question, I don't want anything, but you're making me uncomfortable."  
"I'm so sorry that our reunion after your keeping us apart for so long is such an issue." Hux snapped back, sitting up, eyes intense, hair falling across his brow. Kylo entwined their fingers.  
"What did I say about respect?" The guard snapped. "I assume you must be the other prisoner that Kylo spent so much of his time pining after." He spat.  
"I'm his husband, you-"  
"Don't threaten me. You have very few rights here, and I could get all your privileges revoked with just one word, even this one, the one you tried so hard to gain." Hux fell silent, and sat back. Kylo put an arm protectively around him. "And I thought you were a difficult one to deal with." He smirked at Kylo. Kylo didn't say anything back, only sighing in submission. He knew that there was nothing he could do: he was used to the guard who talked, and he knew that he had to begrudgingly bear it.  
After a moment or so of awkward silence, Kylo decided that, as an act of resistance, he would kiss Hux again. That wasn't something that was going to violate the rules. In fact, there were no rules as such against romantic engagement, as they had not had enough instances to set universal boundaries, especially because there were so many different species and genders and sexual orientations that it was difficult to set rules in the wider world for romantic conduct, let alone in a prison, between cell mates.  
And so, he kissed him. He kissed him like his life truly depended on it, which in a way it did. The feeling of their mouths in rhythm, their tongues intertwining, their hands in all the right places, it was the only thing keeping him sane. Hux was his balance, his counterpart, his everything.  
The guard who talked, for once, was silent. There was nothing he could do.


	23. [Date Unknown]

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey! I'm sad because I really really don't want to say this, but... this is the last chapter of this fic. I guess this gives me more time to write other stuff, but it makes me sad to think/say it. :(  
>  I hope you've enjoyed this 23-chapter rollercoaster ride of emotion (for you to read and me to write), and if you did (cheeky promo here), share it and comment and give kudos!  
>  Love you all!

And so they went on. Though their coexistence was peaceful, it was indeed odd for them to be observed at all times by the guards, so there was little they could do with each other, sadly. They still coped, though, and eventually, they got used to the forced chastity.  
Over time, they were allowed more and more freedoms within their tiny cell. They were granted time to exercise in a special area just for them, and they could wear more of their own clothes, but the best privilege, by quite a long shot, was the introduction of a bed big enough for the two of them. Both couldn't imagine anything better. Before, they had to sleep on the beds that were in the cells originally, on the opposite ends of their expanded room. Sometimes, Hux would fall asleep on top of Kylo, with his head resting lightly over his heart. As lovely as this was, and as little as the guards minded it, they both always woke up with odd aches and pains that were difficult to get rid of.  
The bed, on the other hand, made it all comfortable again, and the sleep pattern that they fell into during their time together on the other ship came back, and suddenly everything felt almost normal again, just during those moments of dozy and carefree sleepiness, where they were neither awake nor asleep, where Kylo would just watch Hux's dusky lashes open slowly to reveal his eyes, or Hux would watch Kylo's dark eyes hiding behind dark hair that had fallen over his face. The artificial light didn't bring the fire into Hux's hair like the starlight used to, instead dulling almost to brown, which was sad, but it made those rare moments where his hair did catch the light in this way more magical.  
This particular morning, it was just like this. Hux's legs were entangled in Kylo's, his head resting in the crook of Kylo's neck, who, in his deep sleep, couldn't feel his breath tickling over his skin gently. Hux, however, was beginning to wake up, but he was always the first to wake up. He'd learned how to ease himself away from Kylo without waking him up, which he did gently, rolling over. He lay there for a while, staring at the ceiling, and sighed: there was nothing to do, and nothing to do about it.  
He heard a knock on the glass.  
Bed-headed and wearing only a t-shirt and pyjama bottoms, Hux padded over to the class, rubbing his eyes as he did so. He only properly looked up at the knocker when we has standing directly opposite them.  
He nearly choked.  
In front of him was not a guard, but the leader of the side hid tried so hard to fight. General Princess Leia Organa.  
He had no words. He didn't know what was going on. He just stood, with his matted hair falling everywhere and catching every shade in the light, and his mouth hanging open slightly.  
"General Armitage Hux?" She replied, staring at him.  
"Yes?"  
"You're skinnier than I imagined you." Hux just shrugged.  
"My uniform made me look more imposing."  
"Right."  
"Anything I can help you with?"  
"I'm looking for my son."  
"Your- son?"  
"You don't know, do you?"  
"Know what?"  
"Why is there one bed here?"  
"I don't think you're looking in the right cell for your son, _General_." He sneered.  
"I think I am, _General_." She, despite being significantly shorter than him, still managed to look down her nose at him. Hux straightened himself up, pushing his hair back, straightening his shoulders. Hux heard Kylo rustle from behind him.  
"Hux?" He heard a mutter: Kylo was finally waking up.  
"I'm here."  
"Who are you talking to?"  
"Nobody, it's fine." Hux looked back at the General, whose eyebrows were raised.  
"What?"  
"Who's that?"  
"Kylo Ren."  
"I knew that- who's he to you?" Hux narrowed his eyes a little.  
"My husband, why do you ask?" Now, Leia's eyebrows had skyrocketed.  
"Mom?" Kylo asked, blearily. It all hit Hux rather at once.  
"That's- that's your mum? You- I- She- What- She's your mother?"  
"Yeah. Did I not tell you this?"  
"We spent the entire time- wait- I knew this. What's going on with my head. I always knew this."  
"Sometimes they try and wipe out as much important information about major opponents to you when you get put into prisons like this because they don't want you plotting and making hit lists for if you get out." Leia filled in. Hux considered this.  
"But how come nothing has happened to me?"  
"I'm your mother. They can't mess with close family links, even if you hate me."  
"Do you still have memories of your father?" Kylo asked Hux. For his sake, Hux went to a very dark place in his mind to try and find out. Hux's stony white expression said everything. Kylo put an arm around him.  
_Sorry._ Hux leaned into him.  
"Tough childhood?" Leia asked. Hux nodded, not quite being able to make eye contact. "I'm sorry."  
"It's all over now. And I have all I need now." Hux looked up into his husband's eyes, smiling fondly.  
"Ah. That. When were you going to tell me you got married, Kylo?"  
"I don't know. I kind of assumed that you wouldn't want to see me ever again."  
"You're still my son, and there's a reason I came to visit you." A kind of inexplicable sadness washed over her face.  
"Mom, is everything alright?"  
"Not really. I'm not long for this universe."  
"Are you sick? Wait- is this the last time I'll get to see you?"  
"I'm sorry, Kylo."  
"Mom, at least come in so I can properly say goodbye." Tears were streaming down his face.  
"You know I can't do that."  
"Please-" He begged.  
"There's nothing I can say, apart from I forgive you."  
"You can't. Not after everything I did."  
"It's hard to forgive, but I need you to understand that I forgive you, and maybe I couldn't get you to change, but you have." She smiled, and looking Hux, continued. "And it's because of you."  
"I'm not sure I could-"  
"Stop." Hux shut his mouth. "You've changed him, and he's changed you. Sadly, everything's happening too late. As they say, though I will be gone, the stars shine still. Goodbye, Ben." She put something into the capsule that transferred objects into the cell. In the moment that the pair of them briefly looked over to it in curiosity, she had left. Kylo saw this, and broke. Hux hadn't seen so much raw pain from anyone in a long time. Hux rushed to his side, and Kylo collapsed into his arms, crying into his shoulder, and that was how they sat for an almost interminable amount of time.  
When they finally broke apart, Kylo went to go sit on the edge of the bed as Hux went to retrieve the object from the capsule. It was a small package, and Hux sat down next to Kylo to open it. When he opened it, three things sat in it. Two of those things were simple wedding bands, gold with another rare metal running along the middle of the ring. The third was a note:  
_Of course I knew, you idiots. I have to say, I was completely shocked when I found out. Not because I didn't know you were gay (you were always terrible at hiding things, Ben), not because I didn't think you'd ever marry (although given the circumstances, I didn't think you would), but because you married your right hand man, who is arguably one of the most terrifying foes we've ever had to face (so congratulations for that)._  
It's sad, as your mother, to have to see you locked up like this, but I know it's what you deserve. That's all I can really say about that. That's your fault.  
I'm glad, however, that you can finally redeem yourself, although it's too late to make much of a change to your circumstances.  
And I know you may not believe this, but I will always love you, no matter what you've done, and no matter if I'm with you in this universe or not. And I know that you will read this note more when I am gone than when I am here, but don't worry.  
I am always here.  
Love each other with all your hearts.  
-L


End file.
